COO, HYDRA

Kar Aik is not your everyday Computer Science Scholar, he is also an Entrepreneur, Investor and a Certified Financial Consultant. He started his own watch brand at the age of 21. His skill set also includes web designing, sales and is fluent in Python and C programming.

Right before the weekends, I managed to contact the Pageant Committee for School of Computer Science and Engineering. We are going to sponsor bracelets to each female pageantees for 1 story and 1 post from each of them from their main account. In addition, we are getting a shout-out from the Main Instagram of the Pageant. Considering the cost of the bracelets and everything, I think its a great deal. Furthermore, over the weekends, I had most of my bracelets delivered to my clients as well.

Things are going well and as the module is coming to an end, its time to consolidate all the information and experiences we been through for the presentation. To be honest, it hasn't been easy and although there are some disputes here and there, I can safely say that it has been a great run.

Up next, we will discuss where will be the next phase of HYDRA....

Cheers :-)

Happy Birthday Singapore!

Haven't been blogging as I've just ended my internship and immediately after had to participate as Group Leader in my hall camp! It's been a really exciting and fruitful summer for me even though its not easy to handle HYDRA's operations and marketing while doing my own internship in an A.I startup. Not only have i learn a lot from my internship, i learn a lot from starting up HYDRA as well, especially in marketing and design.

As I've always been the tech guy in my watch company, I've never really handled procurement and marketing before as those were done by my partners! Am really thankful to be doing something else :-)

Anyways, I've been continuing on working on my design skills and have created poster for national day as well! Will continue to work on the sales and marketing!!

Cheers :-)

Created the Google Form to collect Pre Orders! Thankful for my girlfriend for helping me creating info-graphics on the engravings as well as creating vector image for our logo and Ads for our instagram! Also, I've been consistently posting on Instagram and have managed to attain 2 sales just buy purely sharing on my main account :) Here we learn the power of mere exposure effect and posting consistently.

Also I've been trying to push sales from my friends and i really hit a bump when they asked me what's so different about our bracelet as compared to Daniel Wellington. Cheaper + free engravings doesn't seem to click to her... Hopefully more campaigns and story will be able for us to sell our bracelets better instead of just selling the features .

Lastly, I have also noticed that themindfulcompany has noticed us and blocked us on Instagram. In my opinion, it's a form of flattery and thankfully I have other accounts to stalk them :-)

Spend the entire afternoon walking around orchard road, finding nice spot and filming some videos with my girlfriend to create some marketing advertising video for the upcoming pre orders. Learned quite a lot from her, like not making the video flat and having more 3D feels etc... Not only I had fun, i also came to a realization that know filming and taking photo is not my forte.

Now its time to make use of my premier Pro and hopefully i am able to get something nice up!

Epiphany came out when I was showering. Voices Above Noises. The tagline for our brand which suits our brand purpose which is to empower our customers and allow them to better express themselves. Furthermore, I am currently picking up InDesign skills to generate more content and posters for our social media. After watching multiple tutorials and experimenting with the application, i am finally able to come up with something as shown below..... Yes, still lots of room for improvement.

Last but not least, just had a photoshoot with the team yesterday at MBS! Was really fun and productive :) Now we will just churn out as many content as possible and get pre-orders ASAP.

The samples are finally here in my place! The engravings turns out well and the bracelet's quality are more than decent! Furthermore, I had the supplier for the velvet pouch ready too. Spend a significant amount of time look and talking to many suppliers and narrowed down to a few cheap and good looking ones! I choose a white velvet pouch too as it looks more modern whereas Sarath actually preferred a red one. In the end we had a vote and it was 2-1, so we proceed with the white pouch :-)

It is now marketing and sales part of the project and once we have sufficient pre-orders, I will be able to make the orders ASAP.

Finally an update on this blog! After a long discussion with Sarath around late May, we've decided to move away from the idea of creating something new and fresh to crowdfund on KickStarter. This is mainly due to our level of commitment we have and the limitation of what the manufacturer can create for us. Throughout this summer, all of us have our internship and work, and hence we decided to do something simple and feasible to fit into our current work load.

Still, we stick to the idea of bracelet and lookout for bracelets on Alibaba which are Aesthetically appealing to people around our age. After browsing for at least a good 1 hour, I've came to realization that there are more decent female bracelets than male bracelets, and hence propose that we focus on female bracelets. Also, it will be of my interest to do a female line as I've only done male watches in my own business.

Fast forward to today, we narrowed down the designs that are appealing, send them out for survey, only to come upon a response with 2 designs that are almost equally popular. Hence, in order to filter which is THE ONE to produce, I've speak to tons of suppliers and judge them according to their price and response rate. Now that We've got the relevant information such as price, lead and shipping time, we are ready to make a choice and move on to the next phase of this project.

Hail HYDRA :)

Right before the start of a new working day, I have crafted a message to contact multiple suppliers if they are able to produce bracelets of our requirements. Also, I've contacted some of my friends for tips on dealing with manufacturers. Some of which includes a video call and having conversation with them in Chinese through the call, which I intend to do so if they are able to produce according to our standards. Hopefully I will be able to get some positive replies from the suppliers.