We would like to congratulate both of our Year 12 Young Enterprise companies this year for taking multiple awards at the Reading Local Area Final held on Thursday 11 May at Oracle Corporation, Thames Valley Park.
We are proud of them for their incredible teamwork, achievements, resilience and professionalism throughout the process.
De-Jar-Vu took two awards: the Reading Area ‘Best Business Plan’ Award and the ‘Endeavour, Impact and Results’ Award – the former award is testament to the collective efforts of the company to work effectively and create a clear and concise business plan, whilst the latter is undoubtedly due to the fact that they created more profit than any of the other seven companies who attended the final – a huge £880 with final selling events still in the diary. Renee Culafic-Mix, the Managing Director of De-Jar-Vu hopes to break the £1,000 mark by the time the business is wound up.
A key element of the entire Young Enterprise journey is a focus on sustainability, which makes the collection of the ‘Sustainability’ Award by Engrained particularly praiseworthy. The team has had its challenges, but in the end, they caught the judges interest with their clear sustainable product range and approach to manufacturing.
The event was the culmination of nine months’ hard work that has seen the teams come up with a business idea, undertake market research, create marketing materials and develop an online presence, manufacture their products and then set about selling at college events such as the Christmas Fayre and pop-up stalls in both the Prep and Senior School; they also faced the public at the Oracle Trade Fair in March. They have been involved in numerous competitions throughout the Young Enterprise process such as developing a logo, creating a promotional video and the feared ‘Dragon’s Den’ which was held in November 2022 at the offices of Blandy & Blandy Solicitors in central Reading.
Members of both companies spoke positively about their experiences of the Young Enterprise programme and commented that they have learnt a lot about themselves, their strengths and weaknesses as well as the process of setting up and running a business.
The programme is supported by two external business advisors, Mrs Marina Brierley who worked with Engrained and Mrs Hazel Scott who provided support to De-Jar-Vu.
Dr Steven West, who is our Young Enterprise Centre Lead, wished to formally extend his thanks to both of our business advisors who assist the teams as they navigate their way through the process. Young Enterprise is a programme that is run in Year 12 as an enrichment activity and is open to all students.
