Arden Young Enterprise
As part of the Sixth Form at Arden, Wednesday afternoons are left free for students to complete an enrichment activity. This year, Young Enterprise was brought in as an option to Year 12 students. The programme allows students to start up and run their own company as a part of a small team creating an interesting business idea that they take to regional and national competitions.
We believe that Young Enterprise is a very good experience for anyone who is considering taking business or economics as it allows you to apply your knowledge to a real life experience. However, it is also a very good experience for people who want to improve their team-working or communication skills as you have to work with people that you may not have worked with before.
After filling in applications and going through interviews, our team was selected. There are 13 people on our team in a range of roles from Managing Director to IT Director. With the help of Miss Long, every Wednesday afternoon, we come together to have a meeting to discuss what needs to happen in order for our business, named Zest, to run.
So far this year we have been at both of the Open Evenings at Arden selling drinks, crisps and cakes in order to raise capital for the business. Whilst at these open evenings, we were also carrying out market research to help us to make an informed decision on what product we should create that would be most appealing to people living in the local area. On the 12th November, members of the team attended a trade fair in the centre of Solihull selling phone cable protectors. The profit from this has been reinvested into our business so that it can be used when we start to produce our final product in the near future. We have trade fairs coming up in the next few months, where we will be showcasing our final product and we hope that you will support us by visiting us at these events. We are looking forward to the Regional Final in May and cannot wait to see what the future holds for our business, Zest! Watch this space!
Written by: Katie Harcourt, Year 12, Marketing Assistant of Zest
