Girls in Sixth Form can take part in Young Enterprise, which gives them the opportunity to run their own company. They work with teachers and volunteers from the business community to develop the skills needed to start up a business of their own.
This is the story of Espire Events, a company formed by a Year 12 Business Studies class, told by the Managing Director:
We came up with the name, Espire Events, because we originally planned to organise events, in particular a series of discos. After a successful Junior Disco earlier in the school year and a disco for Years 7 and 8, we realised that this service did not allow us to use our full potential as a group. It was close to Christmas and so our thoughts turned to products that could be sold at the Christmas Bazaar. We brain-stormed and decided to produce our own Christmas mugs filled with chocolates to target those pupils who planned to spend only a little during the day. This was very successful – we sold out! After this success we were motivated to sell products associated with specific calendar events.
Some members of the group wanted to be more creative, and so we decided to hand- make greetings cards for upcoming events such as Easter, Mothers’ Day, birthdays and anniversaries. We sold our greetings cards at the Young Enterprise Fair held at Stratford-upon-Avon and at various school events throughout the year. The experience enabled us to learn about communicating with customers and handling the financial aspects of a business.
We then focussed on selling tracksuit bottoms to pupils from Year 8 – Year 11 at Rye and other schools. This product was called The 100 Club because only 100 were to be sold and this made each product unique because it had its own number. This was already a popular trend so we knew that there was a demand, and this proved to be challenging but successful too.
I have to admit that there were problems, but combining the skills of each company member meant that none of us was on our own. I strongly believe that working as a team gave all of us the strength to make the right decisions.