Junior Entrepreneur
The Junior Entrepreneur Programme (JEP) is an entrepreneurial awareness and skills enhancement programme for Primary School children, created & developed in Ireland! Full details of this programme can be found here on the JEP Website. Over the last few years we have seen 6th classes setting up businesses and we have bought lots of T-Shirts, Pens, Arm Bands etc. Now its our turn. Below is the story of how we took on and enjoyed the challenge of setting up our own business. We have learned loads and got lots of help from many people mentioned below for which we are very thankful.
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Start Up!
We started trying to come up with ideas. Every boy had to come up with an idea. We then picked 6 out of 27 ideas which were bottle flips, energy packs, milky treats, splat balls, stress balls, and the drawstring bags. We then were split into groups of four or five. We worked to make the ideas better. Then we started to make a power point to show the dragons later on which gave details our ideas. Below we will explain how we put our ideas to the Dragons
OUR VISIT FROM MATT!
On the 12/12/16 Matt Black, friend of the school and owner of the very popular Halo Cafe in Celbridge came in to speak to us. We learned a lot like how he surveyed from the car park in Tesco to see how many people each day walked past the site of where he wanted to open his cafe, and how if you are nice to your customers they will come back again and again. He spoke to us about the importance of a good name for the business along with a catchy slogan. We took his advice and will use it in our business. We hope people like our name Back Bags and particularly our slogan 'We Got Your Back' which we have written on all our posters.
THE DRAGONS!
The dragons visited us one week after our visit from Matt. The Dragons were all local people with lots of experience. Mrs Fleming is a retired Vice Principal of Scoil Na Mainistreach, Bn Uí Mhuirí the current Vice Principal, John Keegan Owner of The Academy Barber and William Hanley owns Supervalu in Clondalkin.
All of the groups made a presentation to show the dragons what they had done. When we had shown the dragons our products they went away to decide. When they came back they announced that the drawstring bags had been chose. They had lots of nice things to say about all the business ideas and found it hard to decide.
All of the groups made a presentation to show the dragons what they had done. When we had shown the dragons our products they went away to decide. When they came back they announced that the drawstring bags had been chose. They had lots of nice things to say about all the business ideas and found it hard to decide.
SURVEYS!
After the dragons chose the drawstring bags we made the surveys to find out if boys in the other classes had drawstring bags and would they buy a drawstring bag. We wanted to know what colours they would like to buy and also if there was a draw for a prize would they like to enter. When they were made and printed out we went around to classes and got them to fill out the survey. A group of boys then looked at all of the results and made up the graphs below showing what colours should be decided, what they would use them for and what should be on them.
ORDERING!
We got in contact with suppliers to find out what type of bags were available and at what prices. Initially we got prices for plain bags which increased when we added the School Crest. We got back the pictures from the supplier and even though blue, black and red bags got the most votes in our survey we thought that the white bags looked better when we saw them.
We decided that we would order 300 blue and white bags at €2.20 each. The cost of the crest set up was €50 and delivery €30, bringing the total cost to €740. Each of us has paid €5 into the company to cover some of the cost of purchasing the bags. We have arranged a loan from the school through Principal, Mrs. Corrigan. We will pay the school back first and then pay ourselves back the €5 we invested. After that we will either split the profits or arrange something for the class to do.
We decided that we would order 300 blue and white bags at €2.20 each. The cost of the crest set up was €50 and delivery €30, bringing the total cost to €740. Each of us has paid €5 into the company to cover some of the cost of purchasing the bags. We have arranged a loan from the school through Principal, Mrs. Corrigan. We will pay the school back first and then pay ourselves back the €5 we invested. After that we will either split the profits or arrange something for the class to do.
GROUPS!
After we ordered our product we did a mini exercise where we wrote down our personal strengths . We then went into groups the choices were Finance, Marketing, Design/Production, Sales and P.R Storytelling. We went into the group that best matches our strengths. There was quite a busy few weeks for all the groups getting all the bits of information together, organising posters to advertise the bags, calculating and recalculating our costs and possible profits and preparing for sales.
sales!
When we get our bags we are planning to sell them at €5 each so that we would get a profit of €2.80 each bag that is sold. If we need to we can sell the bags in numerous places like local sports shops. We bought 300 bags so if they are all sold we would make €660, which if we split the money we would get roughly €24 each. We could combine it to get something like... A Pizza party!! We might even go to Tayto Park.
Bags Arrive
Our bags arrived on 21st March and there was great excitement. We opened the boxes and the bags looked great. The crest looked really well on them. The Finance team took them away to count them. The sales and marketing team began bringing the bags to the classrooms to show them to the classes. Selling properly will begin tomorrow.
The beginning of sales
We started selling our bags on the 22nd of March! We went around to classes and showed them our bags we filled them with things that you could carry in the bag. The day after we got lots of sales, we realized that we needed to get an order form. We made up our order forms and came up with a prize! A lucky boy will be picked out to win a trip to BASE with a friend. We also set up a stall in the reception area of the school to sell to parents and other visitors to the school.
time to pay our supplier
Our supplier from fortune marketing came on Friday 24th of March. We handed him €740. He was so delighted to see and hear about the JEP programme he gave us some prizes to raffle off with the trip to BASE.
Final accounts
The Bags cost €760 in total. We borrowed €260 from the school, and we each had to invest €5 in to the company which adds up to €135. We got €345 from selling our bags on the first three days, which came to €740. So that's how we payed our supplier.