Broken sticks for furniture business

Entrepreneurship is a skill which can be learned.

And when it comes to education, hands-on learning is often the best way to pick up such skills.

And that is why developing a business is part of the Entrepreneurship 30 class at Yorkton Regional High School.

Homestyle Hockey is a business launched by a group of YRHS students which involves making furniture and other catchy products such as picture frames, tables, coat racks, and chairs out of broken hockey sticks.

"Levi Morin brought up the idea," said Corwin Stevely, director of health and safety with the school-class launched business. He said of the eight students involved in the business, five are also members of the Yorkton AAA Midget Harvest hockey team, so working with broken hockey sticks "was something we could relate to. It was something we could be passionate about."

With the idea of using a waste product such as broken hockey sticks, the next step was deciding exactly what to make with the sticks, said Carson Bogdan, vice president of technology with Homestyle Hockey. He said the group brainstormed a few ideas, and also hit the Internet for ideas, settling on a few main products; a lounge chair, end table and picture frame.

Some ideas, such as the popular picture frames, were simple enough to design. With a cork board back the frames are ideal for parents and grandparents to post pictures of young hockey players, so have sold well, offered Bogdan.

Tackling building a lounge chair was more challenging.

"We pretty much restored a chair that was already built," said Stevely. "We took the idea and rebuilt it. It was a restoration."

That experience allowed the group to get a better idea of how to make the chair.

Stevely said they are also willing to work with people if they want something specific made.

"There's always a way to make just about anything," he said.

Initially accessing material, broken sticks, was easy.

"In the beginning it was fairly easy," said Stevely. "We could just clean out our garages."

But even among Midget hockey players there is a finite supply of broken sticks.

"Now it's getting a bite harder," admitted Stevely.

It helped they found someone who had collected a bunch of sticks with the idea of doing something similar, but never got around to doing the building.

"He donated a whole bunch of sticks to us," said Bogdan.

The pair said as much as they are now looking for orders from the public for their product, they are also hoping members of the public will contact them if they have some sticks they would like to see recycled into something new and useful.

Stevely and Bogdan said the greatest challenge to operating a business has been juggling their time between school, hockey, other activities, and the time needed to build the inventory.

Bogdan said with only an hour of classroom time each day, it is simply is not enough to build the furniture. "We have to spend time after school," he said, adding for the Harvest players its go to practice after school, then head back to the school and the shop to spend a couple of additional hours building.

Bogdan said the effort has been a big one from the whole group.

"We thought it was going to be a lot easier. There's a lot of challenges we never thought of," he said.

But the group has worked on things as a team, which is where hockey has been a good influence.

"Coming from a team sport, everyone knows they have a role," said Stevely.

As much as balancing time has been a struggle at times, Stevely said the class has been a great learning experience.

"It's learning life-skills, how to start your own business and get something from it," he said. "It shows how hard work can pay off."

And it has taken time to keep inventory in place, since marketing ideas have paid off well for Homestyle Hockey, including a booth at the recent Harvest Showdown.

"We sold out just about everything we had," said Stevely.

Bogdan said they have plans to attend other events, and to do some creative marketing, primarily holding raffles at Harvest hockey games.

The entrepreneurial class runs until just after Christmas, with Homestyle Hockey taking orders up until just before Christmas. To contact them to place an order, or to donate hockey sticks, you can find the group on Facebook, or by email at [email protected]