Grade 12 students at Yorkton Regional High School students have completed the initial semester of a Junior Achievement program which provide hands on business learning.
Class instructor Valerie Gendreau said she has been teaching entrepreneurship since the new curriculum came out, a program where students set a "hypothetical business" where she "taught it based on theory."
Gendreau admitted she herself was growing bored with working on theory alone.
"I'm so pleased I chose to go ahead with Junior Achievement," she said. " I'll never go back. This is way better."
The new class was not without its challenges, said Gendreau, pointing to the "non-traditional; classroom" aspect of the course. It was a case of working with individual students far more, each facing their own challenges within a business framework, rather than teaching a single theory to everyone.
The non-traditional classroom also provided what Gendreau termed the classes biggest strength "working with individual students to see what their strengths are."
Since this was the first time the class was offered at YRHS, Gendreau said it meant she and the students were really forging something new together.
"The students in this room are more colleagues in many ways," she said. " We learned to work together."
The class was split into two groups which had to come up with a business idea, put that idea into production, sell the actual product, and finally present their efforts to a 'board of directors' at the end of the semester.
Country Creations was a business based on making soybean food snacks, and barbed-wire art.
Spencer Bombior was vice president of marketing and sales for Country Creations. In his final report he explained they used a multi-faceted marketing approach.
"The most successful marketing tactic involved was to offer a healthy alternative snack food to the public, which was our oven roasted soybeans. They are full of protein and help lower cholesterol. These health benefits were brought to our customer's attention during our sales pitch. Other successful marketing techniques were social media, sampling, and the various locations that Country Creations made sales at," stated the report.
Red-Letter Home Design was the second company created. It produced a variety of ego-friendly furniture and wall art. All of the products were made from pallet wood and recycled paint. The pallets were accessed through Yorkton Concrete and the paint was from Sarcan.
Alisa de Leon president of Red-Letter detailed the company start up in her final report.
"We unveiled the company for the first time at the Harvest Showdown, here in Yorkton. Harvest Showdown ran from Nov. 7 -10," stated the report. "This was the first time anyone in the community heard of our company. The buzz from the consumers at Harvest Showdown started off our idea to take orders with a bang. This was a great event to showcase our company and hard work because hundreds of people attend this event every year.
"At our first selling event, Harvest Showdown, the final day which was a Saturday, we had an expectation of a larger consumer turnout. Unfortunately a snow storm hit Yorkton and area which caused the lowest turnout of the four selling days. So Red-Letter Home Design came up with a smart marketing strategy to increase our sales. First, by creating a raffle with a $1 charge for entry ticket, on a wall art piece. Second, by having a sale near the end of the day, reducing our prices by 50 per cent. These two marketing strategies ended up being successful."
de Leon said the recycling aspect of the company's product was also a key component of sales success.
"Another success to our company was the product itself. It was environmentally friendly, which is a huge trend with society," detailed her report. "Again, our products are green because of the pallets being reused and the paint being reused as well. The products were also a huge hit because we offered customization, offering a favourite quote or phrase."
In the president's report on Country Creations Devery Stachura stated "although Country Creations was successful, we found that there was a significant amount of room for improvement. That said, we do have some recommendations for future entrepreneurs. We found that communication was an essential part of running a business with a team. Even if it seems that everyone is on the same page, some people may not be. There are ways around the lack of communication. In our case we came up with a clever idea to keep everyone on the same page and making sure everyone is up to date with the business. We created a social network page that only our group has access to.
"Another tip that we would like to offer is making sure everyone is given the best customer service. Customer service is the most important aspect of selling your product. The first impression customers have on your product is your service and communication with the customer. The more approachable you are, the easier it will be to sell your product. Not only that, but people will love someone who is confident that they will love your product. Inviting the customer to buy your product is a great way to get your business more known than it already is."
As far as challenges, participants were near unanimous in pointing to time management demands.
"The greatest challenge was keeping everything organized," offered Stachura.
de Leon said the process "brought us together" as a group, adding they had not been friends before, and might not have naturally hung out, but they have emerged as more than classroom project partners.
Megan Goetting with the Red-Letter group echoed the importance of creating new binds.
"We didn't really know each other until this class. Now I think we're friends," she said.
In terms of the project itself, de Leon said "the whole production aspect was hectic."
Ryan Teneycke, vice-president of finance with Red-Letter said time management was certainly the challenge, slotting in production and sales time with other school and noon-school commitments.
"It was finding the time to do everything," he said.
"You can only work so fast, and there was always orders to be done," agreed Jake Gabel, production expert with Red-Letter.
Raeann Schneider, vice-president of Human Resources with Country Creations touched on the importance of teamwork through the process.
"The importance of teamwork showed in our first meeting when we as a team had to decide upon our business product, the most crucial decision of all. Our team handled it with ease, like all other obstacles that we were faced with," she stated in her final report.
" All of our team members, being high school students, had other commitments outside the company which caused for scheduling difficulties. Production and selling date shifts were frequently hard to fill, but team members volunteered their personal time and compromised with other commitments to get our company tasks done successfully. Our team members have an outstanding amount of motivation as we all realized what needed to be done for our venture to become a success."
As for the highlight of the program, Stachura said it was being "able to run a successful business."
de Leon echoed the sentiment, saying "seeing the business grow and be successful feels great."
Teneycke liked that it was not a traditional class.
"It wasn't the same classroom atmosphere. It was just a busy, busy room," he said.
