Young Enterprise (Company Programme)

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I remember a couple of people posting about this back in September, and I wanted to know how everyone has gotten on. :)

Well for us, we had a team of around thirty people back in September. When December arrived, we never really went anywhere, were still in the early stages and three-quarters of our group dropped the course because of the lack of progress, leaving myself and five others to run the company. Well to be honest, we haven't been doing as well as we could have, we've spent around 4 months developing our 'new' products (the original idea flopped, and wasn't really flexible), and we only started selling today (I know, and the reports are due in early May I heard). Our aim is now is to sell off our remaining stock and to breakeven by next week. Then I'll have to get the reports and stuff sorted.

To those who have done it, what will you have to do at the end of it? I heard somewhere that you have to do a ten minute presentation or something.
 
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Soldato
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I didn't post on the original thread because I'm failry new here, but I'm the financial director for our company. We have only had 7 members who have stayed with us from the start and we will be wrapping up the business within a week. We have to hold an annual general meeting, that lasts about 20 minutes, or so we have planned, where we just say how wel our company has done and give money to our shareholders. Our profits have exceeded £2000, so we reckon we have done well. Did you take the young enterprise exam?
 
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We were cheated out of the prize in the regional heats, thats what all the people who talked to us afterwards said anyway :p

We had two major products, one was personalised keyrings where we took a photo of people, printed it out on glossy paper then stuck it in a keyring for £2.50. We also ahd a website where you could submit orders and upload the pic you wanted etc.

Our second product was more of a charity one where we got in touch with a charity in Ecuador that is trying to preserve rainforest by buying plots of it through donations. we organised it with them that we would give htem money to buy some and then we would get people over here to sponsor it. We made around £2000 from doing that, and gave the majority of it to the charity so they could continue their work.

At the regional finals we had the best stand, the best presentation, highest profit etc. This girl's school claimed a profit of £2000 which was all unsold stock (they reached that figure by saying they spent something like £200 on materials and had £2200 worth of stock, as none of it had sold due to the inflated price - £40 x 55), and they won :mad:

Ah well.
 
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I'm Managing Director of mine :)

We're called "Uber".. Although we arn't going to enter to win.. We held a Talent Show on Monday and it was a great success :D

Just thought I'd share that with everyone ;) :D
 
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We did pretty pants but our adviser never came and our rival school gets all the speacial tratment by everyone becasue they have loads of £££ due to them being a Church of England School.. Bloody *****
 
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Sanzy said:
We did pretty pants but our adviser never came and our rival school gets all the speacial tratment by everyone becasue they have loads of £££ due to them being a Church of England School.. Bloody *****

load of rubbish, all money has to be done through share sales etc & are at a limited amount

in terms of profit thats not always what matters (my company certainly didn't have the biggest profits every time, but they were still fairly decent)

The product/presentation/stand are what really matters, that is what is going to make or break you (we won something like 15 trophies on our way to the finals)

Organisation/having a proper team also helps (but we switched MD half way through & tried to vote this guy down many-a-time)

In terms of what we did:

We sold our shares to the max to obtain a float. With this float we bought stuff/did events (such as school fireworks, made the MENCAP photo library etc) to get an even larger float.
We did mass brainstorming and came up with a really cool product - bags made out of suits. We picked up suits from the local charity shops for next to nothing (and established partnerships with some incl. all of Oxfam - had meeting with them @headoffice products in few stores etc) We then learnt how to make our bags, created a website, advertised (we were in times etc). What was really a big selling point was how we joked around saying how we learnt to do this stuff (i come from an all boys school - no one could sew before). Eventually we even got to the point where we got Tony Blair's suit and made a bag & sold it profits went to charity (at least im pretty sure this happened not 100% sure was too long ago now - domain timed out and everything so 2+ years i guess) ALSO a big thing was that all our profits went to charities (we gave everything to Oxfam in the end)

here are some pics lol found a link to our ol' website ;]

BagSmall.jpg


BagSmall2.jpg


Anyhow rest is history, if you got any questions ill be more than happy to help.
 
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Marketing director = best job :)
We made a good amount of money and because only company members were shareholders we didn't pay out DDs instead we are giving wages to staff members. Since we only had 7 people in our company it was great fun we are all still mates. Oh and the other half of the money we made is going to a school trip that our financial director is taking part in.
We wrapped up our company in March.
 
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naffa said:
I'm Managing Director of mine :)

We're called "Uber".. Although we arn't going to enter to win.. We held a Talent Show on Monday and it was a great success :D

Just thought I'd share that with everyone ;) :D
Wait a second at our regional finals our stand was next to a company called Uber...but they were from George Watsons a private school in Edinburgh :p
 
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Guys, from the sounds of it, you've all done very well, good job! :)

Unfortunetely, we haven't had an advisor at all, teacher was hardly an influence and we were left to our own accord - which if you combine inexperience with lack of guidance, it's the equation for problems. I'm not sure if we're competing in the regional fields, I honestly have no idea what is going on. Apparently, we have to finalise our reports and everything in two weeks time, will we have to show this to Young Enterprise in our Borough, or do we send it off? Also, will we have to do a presentation in front of the other schools? As honestly, we've been told nothing, and I'm only getting answers from you guys on here.
 
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Mackass said:
Guys, from the sounds of it, you've all done very well, good job! :)

Unfortunetely, we haven't had an advisor at all, teacher was hardly an influence and we were left to our own accord - which if you combine inexperience with lack of guidance, it's the equation for problems. I'm not sure if we're competing in the regional fields, I honestly have no idea what is going on. Apparently, we have to finalise our reports and everything in two weeks time, will we have to show this to Young Enterprise in our Borough, or do we send it off? Also, will we have to do a presentation in front of the other schools? As honestly, we've been told nothing, and I'm only getting answers from you guys on here.


Erm you do need to have the reports i think in the richmond&king qualifiers the first presentations were by urself with judges in a closed room, all after that were in front of everyone on stages n stuff (i missed many of the later ones incl. last ones at ritz 'cause of holidays & exams dam further maths :/)
 
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spirit said:
Erm you do need to have the reports i think in the richmond&king qualifiers the first presentations were by urself with judges in a closed room, all after that were in front of everyone on stages n stuff (i missed many of the later ones incl. last ones at ritz 'cause of holidays & exams dam further maths :/)

Thanks.

Could you tell me more about the presentation i.e. was it formal with everyone suited up, did you blag it whilst on stage, and have you got any tips or words of advice for the presentation on the whole?

By the way, fantastic product you have there; really unique and creative. And it also went to charity, well done.
 
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the first ones at the subregional (subregional --> sw london --> london --> sw eng --> eng) something like that i think, we just basically blagged - we made sure of a few things

1. the powerpoint was snazzy, i may have a copy of it somewhere, to the point, colourschemed, professional etc
2. the talk did not go over 5mins (or was it 8mins anyway there IS a timelimit)
3. 1st we all wore smart clothes, second suits, 3rd our own special made tshirts
4. we had stuff written down in bullet points on those little card things & had them on the PC (in powerpoint u can add notes to slides ) so we knew when to change the slide (have people talking (4 for us) and one monkey pressing buttons)
5.The report does carry quite a bit of weight
6. Be consise/to the point/try to sell the product well
7. If you can practise 'cause it does matter/make a difference
8. Confidence, that really matters
9. If you can present to a bunch of outsiders, who can give you all the flac you can.
(ps the Richmond&Kingston finals, if you are in taht gorup are at my old school this year :o )

but we really didn't have a clue, and our product really did sell itself.

@Trade Fairs
In terms of stalls and stuff (which were at something different, you dont do a presentation perse here - but they do come around ask questions and stuff like that) presentation is really really important, stand must be snazzy looking, display must be good, you will do better if you all have a uniform or something

here are some links we were in:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12774-1336037,00.html
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12774-1312232,00.html

ill try and find a pic of our stand if i can
 
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Thanks very much spirit!

About the presentations, will only the winning company's be chosen for the next stage? i.e. the winner of the subregional will go to West London, and if they win, go to.....England etc.

From that article, it seems like you guys were very successful indeed, you must have been real proud. :) One thing for sure though, we certainly won't be setting the world alight... we're currently in negative cashflow, sums it up really. But it's a good learning curve, no real risk involved, there's a lot to take on board and we're going to give it our all.

Thanks for the advice everybody.
 
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im the design director for our Young Enterprise thing,and tbh we flopped bad.the concept was good but lacked teamwork.

we made custom tshirts selling for £7,we got a lot of buyers but the people who was ironing the transfer sheet in our group was so incompetent they burnt one every 3 shirts. i fink we are JUST breakingeven.
 
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I done it 2 years ago, and to be honest didnt really like it. We done the total success of breaking even :o

Yes, you have to do a financial review of the company at the end of the year which is done in a judged presentation, which to be honest was the highlight of the year for me, although the presentation was closer to 20 mins and in front of about 300 people. It was worth it for the free food ;)
 
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Mackass said:
Thanks very much spirit!

About the presentations, will only the winning company's be chosen for the next stage? i.e. the winner of the subregional will go to West London, and if they win, go to.....England etc.

From that article, it seems like you guys were very successful indeed, you must have been real proud. :) One thing for sure though, we certainly won't be setting the world alight... we're currently in negative cashflow, sums it up really. But it's a good learning curve, no real risk involved, there's a lot to take on board and we're going to give it our all.

Thanks for the advice everybody.

I think its first 2 of regionals, 2 of West, Winner of London, Winner of England - I think. There was a dam good photo of us in the times, but i cant find it, it had each of us holding a trophie & pics of the bag n stuff (we managed to get soemthing like 12-16 trophies ;))
 
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We set up a web design and hosting company when I did YE 5 or 6 years ago. We were the most professional group of people there by far, had an ace presentation and a really slick display in my opinion.

We had a sustainable long term business plan, had a lot of clients (2 people from overseas who had hosting with us, several LTD companies we had designed websites for, as well as a town council and the local chamber of commerce).

We made a reasonable profit, and we so successful we went on to become a Ltd company and trade for 4 more years whilst I was at Uni.


And we lost at the regional event to a "company" selling hand made rubbish from a desk in their school foyer :rolleyes:

I think the fact they were all girls and dressed in pink low cut tops did it.

Am I bitter? Definately!

Do I now think the whole thing is a bit of a farce? Definately - afterward a teacher from another school came up to us and said she felt really sorry and that she couldn't understand how we'd lost. Ah well.
 
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above poster is right i guess to an extent, some of the people we competed against were just a joke :/

u prolly didnt get thro 'cause u were doin a hitec product and the judges are all old fogies :p
 
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