Young Enterprise

Recent Events Young Enterprise 2009/10 Young Enterprise 2008/09 Young Enterprise 2007/08 Young Enterprise 2006/07 Young Enterprise 2005/06 Young Enterprise 2004/05

Young Enterprise is an educational charity founded by Sir Walter Salomon in 1963 to provide practical business experience for young people. The young people involved (known as Achievers) gain a real understanding of how business works and have the chance to develop and display a variety of skills and abilities.

A team of up to 16 people in Year 12 is formed to make a company, which makes and sells a real product. They raise money to do this by selling shares in the company. The positions to be filled in the company include, Managing Director, Finance Director, Sales Director, Marketing Director, Administration Director, Operations Director, Personnel Director and Information, Communications and Technology Director. Deputies for each of these positions may also be filled. The group has to work together as a team, each making their own contribution. The company has a life of two terms and then it is wound up. A Company Report is produced. The company should hopefully have made a profit. From this, the shareholders are repaid with a dividend on their investment, the achievers may pay themselves a bonus and donations may be made to charity.

Achievers enter their company in a national competition and, individually, may take a written examination to show how much they have learned which is worth the equivalent of two GCSEs. When their company is registered they will get a detailed information pack and a CD Rom which will guide them through each step. An adviser from the business world is appointed as someone they can turn to for help and advice.

Recent Events

Young Enterprise 2009/10

This year there are two Young Enterprise companies; Azure and Oxygen. Azure have been selling a wide variety of colour-changing mugs to fund other, currently secret, products, next term. Oxygen have been selling a selection of prints from Flo Cahill in their group to fund their major product next term. Do look forward to exciting products from both of these excellent Year 12-run businesses.

Young Enterprise 2008/09

This year there have been 35 Year 12 members in 3 Young Enterprise companies; eclectic, Kite and Spice. All three have now produced written reports and have entered the Young Enterprise competition. All three companies have won through to the Oxfordshire Finals taking place on the 20th May at the Said Business School. Eclectic and Spice won through as heat winners of the Central Oxfordshire competition and Kite have also won through. Kite were also awarded £150 of book tokens for the most innovative Young Enterprise company in Oxford.

Eclectic and Spice - joint winners of their heat

This year eclectic have written, illustrated and printed a multilingual children's book Frideswide the Owl. Frideswide the Owl is a lovable, if slightly arrogant Oxfordian owl whose friend Darwin (the rat) asks him a very tricky question:

"What is the most precious thing in the world?"

In order to find the answer to this question, Frideswide travels the world, making new friends and learning about different cultures and languages. Within the group, they learn or speak 8 foreign languages, and aim to encourage children to enjoy learning foreign languages as much as they do. They had a very successful day at the Cowley Trade fair last term where they hired a live owl as an extremely successful marketing tool for their stand.

Eclectic with their owl at the Cowley Trade Fair

Having already sold over 200 books they have now translated their book into Mandarin and Hindi themselves. They are now in the process of trying to arrange a deal in India for selling 10000 books jointly in Hindi and English with a publisher in Mumbai. Eclectic are also pursuing a similar ideal in Shanghai for 2000 books jointly in Mandarin and English as well as a serialisation of the book in a regional newspaper. They won through to the Oxfordshire finals of the Young Enterprise competition which will be on 20th May, having produced a 10 page written report, given a five minute PowerPoint presentation and answered questions at their trade stand.

Eclectic at the Oxford heat of their competition

Kite have sold a range of hoodies last year including for Anything Goes.

Kite hoodies

Having sold 137 of these they have now proceeded with their main product, a Date Incorporated Barcode System, allowing companies to track, by computer, the use-by dates of their stock. They have had a high level meeting with Sainsbury's at their Head Office in London for two hours in March and have another scheduled soon to progress their idea. Sainsbury's have told them that Kite have found a gap in their systems as currently they have to spend approximately £13 million each year checking stock manually in their stores on a daily basis. Kite are unable to release too much detail about their product in order to protect their idea.

The Date Incorporated Barcode System

Particular thanks go to Malcolm Sadler who met with them and whose help was invaluable in preparing them for their first meeting with Sainsbury's. At the Oxford heat of the Young Enterprise competition, Kite were awarded £150 of book tokens as a prize for the best company for innovation. They are waiting to see whether they have progressed to the next round of the competition to the Oxfordshire finals which will take place on 20th May.

Spice have successfully written, illustrated and sold their book for teenage girls in the context of the credit crunch, maintaining a very high standard in what was a very short space of time in which to produce the book. They have sold heavily in and out of school including very successfully at Cowley trade fair last term, where they were awarded the prize for the best stand on the day.

Spice's award-winning stand at the Cowley Trade Fair

They have gained significant local publicity in the Oxford Mail, Oxford Times and are in contact with the Daily Telegraph. Spice have now started a new product which is city walk card of Oxford which are to be on sale soon. This exciting new product is likely to be the first in a range of similar walk cards for other cities such as Stratford, Cambridge and Bath. Spice have won through to the Oxfordshire finals of the Young Enterprise competition which will take place on 20th May.

Spice at the Oxford heat of their competition

Previous Events

Young Enterprise 2007/08

This has been another hugely successful year for the two Young Enterprise companies, The Nouveau Company and Kaleido.

The Nouveau Company published their guide to Oxford for language schools and have completed the very impressive task of selling all of their remaining stock out of a print run of 3000. They were awarded the Oxford Mail Award for the best publicity of a company in Oxfordshire and the Oxford Computer Consultants Award for the Best Website in Oxfordshire. 

Kaleido completed their compilation CD of local bands and were able to arrange selling them in W.H. Smith in Oxford one Saturday in May.  In the competition, Kaleido won awards for the Best Financial Report, the Unipart Automotive Cup for the Best Company Report and the Grant Thornton Shield for the Best Company in Oxfordshire.  They won through to the South East Finals in June in Horsham where they won the ICSA Good Governance Award and the Best Written Report and were the Runner Up Company in the South East out of four hundred companies. 

 
Members of Kaleido at the Oxfordshire finals          Members of Kaleido with their CD        

Both companies have held their Annual General Meetings and have paid back their shareholders with a 20% dividend.  They also both successfully nominated their Business Adviser, Graham Varney, for an award, who was given the prize for the Business Adviser of the Year in the South East.  Many congratulations go to Graham who has been invaluable for his help in running the Young Enterprise scheme at Oxford High School for many years.

 

Young Enterprise 2006/2007

After last year’s success with the OHS company Jinx reaching the National Finals of the Young Enterprise competition, a record 25 sixth formers are participating in the scheme. For the first time there are 2 companies, Zest and CoCo. Below is a summary of their exciting activities to date:

Zest

Zest is one of the Oxford High School Young Enterprise Companies for 2006-7. Our managing Director in Sneha Sinha and the other members of the team are Savitri Tan, Lucia Chen, Hannah Huang, Yuchen Jiang, Angela Zhou, Natasha Morrison, Emily Matthews, Georgia Kersh, Nicole Dulieu, Emma Robinson, Maddy Kavanagh, Joanna Stainer, Alice Lacey and Jess Wyatt.

For our main product we have decided to manufacture ‘Green Ideas Diaries’. These are diaries made from recycled paper with tips and quotes to do with recycling inside. We feel that recycling is socially relevant to our lives today, and as many people are trying to become more involved with recycling, our product will not only be actively recycling, but also helping other people to recycle more efficiently.

CoCo

COCO is one of the two young enterprise companies running in Oxford High School this year. We began the company in September and it now consists of ten members from years 12 and 13.

After much deliberation we eventually chose mugs as our initial product. We offer two types of mugs; plain and colour changing. There is also the option of personalised mugs; you can have writing, logos and pictures of your choice printed onto either plain or colour changing mugs.

Colour changing mugs will change colour with heat, you can choose between two colour changes: blue to white mugs or black to white mugs. If you order a personalised mug, the writing and picture will appear once heat has been added, i.e. when you pour hot water into the mug. These make ideal gifts for your friends and family, as well as liven up your kitchen. We chose these mugs as our product because we liked the innovative colour changing aspect.

So far we have been successful at running our company and have gained a lot of real-world experience. In order to expand CoCo’s business opportunities we have also begun selling a range of bags, purses and accessories made from recycled juice packs – which are made of non-biodegradable foil and plastic packaging that would otherwise go into landfill sites and incinerators. These Bags are made for us in the Philippines by a women's cooperative, the Women's Multi-Purpose Cooperative based near Manila. The cooperative produces approximately 500,000 bags and household items per year, thus preventing many millions of juice packs from being burnt, buried or littering the streets and waterways.

We are also in the process of discussing new ideas and preparing for a competition and trade fairs in the coming months. We hope CoCo will do well in both of these!

Young Enterprise Update - February 2007

We, as Directors of the company feel that CoCo has progressed and achieved a lot in the last couple of months. We participated in the Cowley Trade Fair, in which we won the award for “Highly Commended on Customer Service”. The sales of our mugs and our bags are going well and we have been at many events both in the Senior Department and have been kindly allowed to participate in events organised by the FOXHS. We would like to say thank you to Daryl Back who has been very supportive at those events. We are hoping to organise events at the Junior School next term.

The development of our new exciting product is well under way and we will unveil the results of the extensive research we have carried out later in the year. We are currently working on putting together our Company Report and entering the Competition as well as preparing for the Young Enterprise exams.

So, as you can see, we have been very busy, but we enjoy doing our jobs. We hope those of you who have purchased our mugs and bags have enjoyed them, and we look forward to selling many more of our products later in the year.

Young Enterprise Companies Reach County Finals - April 2007

Congratulations to Zest and CoCo who both won through to the Oxfordshire Finals of the Young Enterprise competition on Tuesday 24th April.  Zest won the Best Business Plan and also the Best Company Presentation.  CoCo won the award for the Best Company Report.  CoCo also plan to reform their company outside of school and produce exciting, innovative products using their colour-changing technology.

Young Enterprise 2005/2006

Oxford High School’s Young Enterprise company for 2005/06 is JinX. The team is composed of 18 Year 12 students: Jenny Boon, Jade Chen, Tessa Coates, Harriet Collier, Katie Jones, Susannah Keene, Lauren Mckay, Rachel McKay, Anna Montague-Johnson, Chandni Patel, Christiane Pearson, Rebecca Ptaszynski, Carmel Sandler, Rosie Simm, Kate Simpson-Wells, Pippa Smith, Louisa Townson and Sherry Zhang. Our link teacher is Mr Gallacher and our business adviser is Graham Varney. We meet twice a week, once after school and once during our general studies slot, to discuss our product’s progress and future plans for the company. Our mission statement is:

“To create a magical, stimulating and educational experience for children everywhere through the power of imagination.”

This year, the JinX team have written, illustrated and secured a publishing deal for a children’s book about JinX: the Magical Cat, inspired by the company’s name. Our book has been supported by Korky Paul, a well-known local illustrator, whom we contacted to ask for advice on the illustrating of the text. We have also designed and personally manufactured bookmarks with a small pewter pendant to accompany the book. If we are successful in promoting and selling our product, we plan to design other spin-off products, such as an audio version of the stories or children’s colouring books. We also plan to obtain purchasing deals with local bookshops in order to widen our market.

Throughout the writing, illustrating and publishing of our book, we have not only learnt a great deal about setting up and running a successful business, but we have also learnt a lot about all the work that needs to go into producing such a product, and all the team members have benefited from this very interesting experience.We have also had a lot of help from various people, notably Korky Paul, who helped us with our illustrations and layout of the book, being a well-known national illustrator.

We are also pleased to find our book available for purchase on the Amazon website.

Cowley Trade Fair – 28th January 2006

The Cowley Trade Fair was a great success for this year’s team. We sold 35 of our books, making £245 on the day. The Oxford Mail is planning to write an article about us and has also agreed to review our book – which is a huge step forward! We also picked up two awards at the trade fair, and came runner-up in the other two. The two awards we won were The Best Trade Stand and The Innovation Award, which are shown below, along with photos of our stand at Cowley. As a team, we are very pleased with the outcome of the trade fair and proud of our achievements so far.

    
The Innovation Award                       Award for the best stand

As a result of our success, we plan to contact other media such as news channels, radio stations, bookstores and other newspapers. We also hope to be successful at the Oxford City Young Enterprise competition, to then hopefully move on to the Oxfordshire and South-East competitions. We are currently working hard towards these competitions, and towards publicising our product outside of school and around Oxford.

The stand at Cowley Trade Fair

Explaining the story so far…

Young Enterprise Oxfordshire County Final - 15th May 2006

This year’s Young Enterprise company Jinx had an extremely successful time at the Oxfordshire County finals of the Young Enterprise Competition. They were awarded;

The Oxford Mail Award for the best publicity,

The AC Neilsen Challenge Cup for Marketing and Market Research and

The Grant Thornton Shield for the Best Company.

They now go on to represent Oxfordshire in the South East Regional Finals on Wednesday 21st June.

Young Enterprise South East Finals - 21st June 2006

Jinx had a superb day at the South East Young Enterprise finals winning the best company report and the best overall company. They now go forward to the national finals in July in London where they will compete against companies from around the UK in a three day competition.

Young Enterprise National Finals - 16th-18th July 2006

Jinx, the Young Enterprise company from Oxford High School had a very enjoyable experience at the National Finals of the Young Enterprise competition at the Savoy in London. They were interviewed by five judges, including Ansell Henry from The Apprentice fame, as well as attending a question and answer session from the same judges. They also gave a presentation in front of 500 guests including Phil Hope MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Skills and Tanny Gray-Thompson the athlete.

They were highly commended for the quality of their product and the fact that they managed to sell 25 copies of their book in less than 30 minutes to assembled guests the previous evening. Overall, the company reached the finals out of 3700 companies and over 44 000 students who participated in the scheme. Well done to all those who attended.

Jinx on Central News

Jinx, this year's Young Enterprise company, appeared on Central News on Saturday 8th July. This was a feature outlining their hugely successful children's book that they have written and illustrated themselves. They are representing the South East of England at the National Finals in London from 16th to 18th July.

Young Enterprise 2004/2005

Mint is Oxford High School’s Young Enterprise company for 2004-2005. This year the team is composed of Hannah Allworth, Sophie Caldecott, Giulia Cerundolo, Erica Donaghy, Tabitha Goodall, Becky Hammersley, Sarah Johnston, Katie Lee, Charlotte Mardon-Heath, Charlotte Patterson, Anna Shepherd, Zoe Smith, Hannah Steiner, Sophie Stuart-Lee, Amelia Spencer, and Anna Tochlin. The link teacher is Mr Gallacher, and Graham Varney is the company adviser. The team meets weekly to discuss ideas, make decisions, and plan future meetings and events. Our mission statement is:

“Mint aims to be innovative & inspiring company, committed to product quality and customer satisfaction.”

Mint’s second product – Recipe Book - “A Taste of Oxfordshire”.

A Taste of Oxfordshire is a community-based project, taking contributions from a number of local sources including Oxford colleges, artists working in Oxfordshire and members of the MINT team ourselves. We have included a selection of delicious and easy to prepare recipes from a number of different world cuisines, to reflect Oxford’s unique multicultural identity.

In purchasing this book you are contributing to a valuable cause as MINT plan to donate a percentage of the profits to the fund for a new children’s hospital at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. The new hospital will provide vital services for children throughout the county and make their time in hospital more comfortable for them and their parents.

Cowley Trade Fair - 19th January 2005

19/01/05 was the Cowley Trade Fair. It was held at the Templars Square Shopping Centre from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm. MINT started selling its second product - recipe book. There were lots of positive feedbacks from the general public. The trade fair was successful and MINT sold over £270 worth of products. There was prize giving in the afternoon and MINT won 3 awards!

   

Oxfordshire Young Enterprise county finals at Culham - 4th May 2005

Mint had a very successful night winning through as Oxfordshire’s representative to the regional finals in Horsham on the 22nd June 2005. They won:

1. The Buisness Link Award for the best Business Plan
2. The Oxford Mail Award
3. The Set4Success Best Website Award
4. The AC Neilsen Challenge Cup for Marketing and Market Research
5. The Grant Thornton Shield for the Best Company

The Stand at Culham

The Presentation at Culham