26th Mar 2015
As part of our AS level Business Studies, we got the chance to start up a mini enterprise to try and raise money for charity.
We each had interviews that decided our roles in the company. After this, we each invested £10 start up capital! After all the funds had been collected, we had gathered a total of £200 from our class and other shareholders (of course they’ll get their ten pounds back!).
Up to Halloween, we invested in a variety of products to sell, ranging from slinkys and stretchy men to chocolate mice and 50p mix-ups.
Ignoring the fact that none of us are ever going near a chocolate fountain again, the chocolate cups we sold for £1 each were a complete success. All in all, following a bit of “healthy” competition, Halloween provided us with a very sound sum of money to use come Christmas.
Christmas quickly arrived, and so we needed new products to sell. Our key product was our calendar. The calendar was made up of 12 different locations around the Mid Ulster area, from many years in the past. Gortreagh printed these calendars and we ordered a batch of 350, using nearly every penny we made at Halloween. This, along with £100 of sweets and a huge bag of cinema popcorn, meant we were well on our way to a very nice profit.
We weren’t expecting the 350 calendars to sell so quickly, but they did; so, we decided the best course of action was to order another 150, taking our total to a massive, and slightly risky, 500 calendars!
To some of our group’s shock, the extra 150 calendars sold equally as quickly, as well as basically everything else we had cluttered in Mrs Ferguson’s store.
The calendars were sold in all of the local villages that were featured on a sale or return basis as well as at the school production ‘The King and I’.
In the end, after a very enjoyable (and stressful) few months, we managed to raise a marvellous total of £2,600 profit, making us the most successful company to date. This profit was equally shared between Alzheimer’s and Meningitis charities.
Christopher Reynolds and Dylan Hughes,
Managing Directors
Menu
