On Nov. 16, junior Chloe Cripe, along with 16 other students on the Robotics team, went to the craft fair at SHS in the East Gym. There, they set up a booth and sold keychains, earrings, fidget toys, phone stands and crocheted items.
“A parent organization chose to get a booth up there and organize an event where students could try to raise some more money for our program,” Robotics advisor Mark Snodgrass said.
The craft fair was used as an opportunity to raise more money for the Robotics team’s program and to spread the word about FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and its teams, but this opportunity also turned out to be a learning opportunity for the students.
The craft fair was an event in which a variety of vendors sold different sorts of homemade goods and items through a company.
The items that the students had made and sold were both 3D-printed and crocheted. Items such as the key chains and fidget toys were 3D-printed, with the keychains being things such as class years and the Mini Movers’ logo. The crocheted items, such as hats and glow-in-the-dark ghosts, were made by Cripe.
Cripe has stated that at the beginning of the year, Robotics had started with basically no money whatsoever. And depending on how far they make it in competitions, they could need a lot of money, since the things they need for robots aren’t cheap.
“Some of the students were excited about it, (while) some of the younger students didn’t understand why we have to do things outside of robot world,” Snodgrass said. “But robot world’s expensive, and we have to pay for it.”
While some of the students, such as sophomore DaKuan Yang, chose to volunteer at the craft fair so they could do something rather than just sit at home, freshman Jocelyn Cripe volunteered because she thought it would be fun.
“It was fun talking to other people … ,” Jocelyn said. “I got to see what other people like.”
Despite whether or not the students wished to go and volunteer at the craft fair, Snodgrass believes that this was a good learning experience for the students. He believes that it helped them learn how to run and organize a booth at such an event, the type of items needed along with their quality and time organization between fellow members.
Jocelyn says that she learned how to market and sell items, and Chloe says that pricing was a big aspect in this event.
“Something I already know is people think crochet stuff is so overpriced,” Chloe said. “I know my stuff has seemed a little overpriced, and I honestly feel some of the 3D-printed stuff we had was underpriced.”
Through this event, while earning money for future robotics projects was the main goal, along the way, they learned valuable lessons surrounding marketing, communication and more.
