We had an extremely busy week at the Learning Sparkler center last week, preparing for our Promotions Booth at Amcorp Mall!

Held on 16 & 17 January 2010, we offered a variety of our own services including those by Baby Signs™ Programs and Montessori World Educational Institute!

Since it was the first time we held such an event, we were aware that we would eventually run into some problems. Some were silly and could have been avoided if we knew the quirks and oddities of Amcorp Mall - example, some areas of the Mall were inaccessible by the elevator if you had the luck of parking on the wrong side of the building - and some were extremely frustrating  - imagine lugging heavy items around to your designated floor only to discover that your booth had been moved to a lower and easier to access area elsewhere.

Fortunately, these problems were quite small and easily remedied. After all, what are mistakes if not a lesson to learn from?

On the first day we were placed near the mall's small post-office on the second floor. Our operating hours: 10am - 5pm.

After spending some time setting up, we relaxed and waited. Relaxed because lugging heavy furniture (and one giant Beebo™) was taxing and waited because we realized that most people do not stop by the post-office lately, maybe cause of the easiness of emails rendering letters moot or maybe it’s because it’s Saturday.

Eventually Rose noted that although we had a lot of items out on display, we had no other advertisement (like a giant banner) to show or tell them what we were!

Yes, Beebo™ was quite prominently displayed, yes our leaflets were exposed on the table, but people (we realised) can be quite shy about things that are not familiar with. I'm sure a great deal of people are not aware of the benefits of baby sign language considering that it had only been around for less than five years. I'm also aware that some might wonder how can a baby use sign language anyway? If you'd like to know about this and more we offer a FREE "Intro to Baby Signs™" on the 24th January 2010 (Sun) at 11am in Petaling Jaya.

By the time I came back, Jamie Solomon, owner of Baby Signs™ Malaysia(BSM), dropped by and lent us a the BSM banner. The banner really helped because at least people could see us better but the amount of people actually stopping by can be counted with one hand. Since we did not come here to simply carry heavy objects and then flop over the desk like a fish, we summoned the energy to go out and seek more customers. Aisha Z. Abdullah, another ICI, was there as well, helping on whatever she can.

We were glad they were there because as soon as lunch hour was over people began to flock over, some curious, and some wanted the free candy Rose had placed on the table. Unfortunately, the candies disappeared fairly quickly as people took it without asking what our booth was offering.

Eventually the day reached 5pm and we had to pack up and leave. All in all, we did not have high expectations on the first day, considering that this was our first time it’s inevitable that we ran into some setbacks that could have been avoided.

Hoping that the next day would be better we made a quick meeting and smoothed out what we thought would be the rough edges.

On the second day (12pm - 6pm) we ended up on the first floor, just in front of THStudio a change that our organisers neglected to mentioned to us.

Since our new area had more people coming and going, resulting in more than just curious customers, we did not dwell on it very much. Of course there were a lot more parents (with children below four) shopping as well, so unlike Saturday (where our demographic were scarce), we had more people to target. Jamie visited us and brought a simple poster for Baby Signs™ to place on the wall behind us.

We did not spend the day relaxing and instead it was flurry of questions and I running errands as we kept running out of leaflets. Compared to the previous day, Sunday was quite productive. We did not even get to eat much as a lot of people kept appearing whenever we want to leave, enquiring about Baby Signs™, Montessori or our very own Learning Sparkler services.

It also helped that Rose decided to sell some of the books from our Book Rentals services. It also sparked the idea that next time we might do well to include some live demonstrations (ie: a 4D massage sessions, ladies only, sorry, Sign, Say & Play® Session 

The time flew by quickly and before we knew it, it was already 6pm and everyone had started packing up. It was extremely exhausting (we were out of shape, clearly), but it didn’t seem so difficult this time because our spirit was kept afloat by our mini-success. That and we actually brought trolleys for our things this time.

Since it was so much fun (barring the whole lugging your things around), we’d thought we’d repeat this event with even more interesting things, so watch this space!