This year’s Young Enterprise team of budding businesswomen in Lower 6 has performed fantastically at the Devon and Cornwall Regional Final, winning the Creativity Award for their ingenious eco-friendly homemade makeup wipes and scrunchies!
The Young Enterprise challenge invites groups of students from across UK schools to run their own business and tackle everything from product development and sales to marketing and financial management. Building on a strong business ethos to be as eco-friendly as possible, the ‘Maynard Makes’ team have been working hard for months to make and sell their products, sourcing scrap fabric from home that would otherwise have gone to waste. “The choice of what to make was clear when we realised eight out of 15 of us had sewing machines! And those who didn’t have been helping to cut and trim the fabric, so it’s worked brilliantly.”
Maynard Makes has been a hit at the Christmas Fair, two Junior School sales and breaktime sales in the Senior School, and on Wednesday set up shop at Exeter College for the Devon and Cornwall Regional Final. “When the judges came over to look at our stall, they were especially interested in the reusable makeup wipes that we were sewing ourselves – they said it was quite an original idea.” They then went through interviews and a presentation to share their experiences with the judges – “They asked about how we came up with the idea, how we assigned different roles, our selling experiences and any problems we’d had.” And their answers clearly wowed, given that they walked away with the Creativity Award for their outstanding work!
“It was a really enjoyable experience and we all definitely developed our leadership skills, our teamwork skills and of course our sewing skills! It was eye opening as some of us hadn’t stepped forward for leadership roles before, so it was quite full on having to learn those skills so quickly, but we had the whole team to lean on for support.”
Huge congratulations to the Maynard Makes team!
