Battle of the YES companies

10 June 2005

Battle of the YES companies

11 YES company finalists battled it out last Thursday, (9 June) before a panel of local business people for the prestige of winning the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Regional Oral Presentation Finals. Chantal Gilmore of Gilmore Brown, and the Convener of Judges for the Northland Business Excellence Awards, Vanessa Adams, regional manager, ANZ, and Lyn Morris from the Enterprise New Zealand Trust had undertaken the unenviable task of choosing the winning team from competitors of a very high standard.

The Oral Presentations is an opportunity for YES companies to present their business plan and launch their product or service. Preliminary rounds are held throughout Northland and the best of the best are then invited to present at the Regional Finals.

Product and services profiled ranged from gift baskets, incorporating a range of Northland sourced products, from Kerikeri High School’s Verge team to innovative seat belt covers designed to increase seat belt useage by teens from “Let’s Be Frank” of Whangarei Girls’ High School.

The overall winner was “Sportec” from Whangarei Boys’ High School. Their onnovative presentation won them prize money of $250.00

The celebration of excellence continued with presentations for a number of winners in the Northland Polytechnic Business Plan Awards and the MORE FM Advertising Competition. Winners of the MORE FM competition, Charisma Corp of Kamo High School wrote of the best radio script and now receive $2,000 worth of airtime to promote their business.

Northland Polytechnic sponsor the Business Plan Award in recognition that detailed planning is a fundamental cornerstone of successful small businesses.

Overall winners, for the best Business Plan were Dominic Fromont and Melanie Henderson, “Put A Lid On It”, from Bream Bay School. Melanie and Dominic are producing and selling lids for recycle bins. Joan Taylor, Northland Polytechnic, commented that the panel was impressed with the all round, very high standard of Business Plans prepared by YES students and that it was great to see the improvement from year to year.

The next events scheduled in the YES calendar are the Trade Fairs being held in Kerikeri, 30th and 31st July, and Whangarei on the 4 August. The Trade Fairs provide YES companies with the opportunity to market and sell their products and services to the public.

YES is coordinated in Northland by Enterprise Northland. It is a learning experience for young people, teachers and business people in which senior secondary school students form a company; become directors; develop products and services, which they market and sell.

YES is school based and teaches the skills amongst other things of leadership, teamwork, marketing, budgeting, planning, interpersonal relations, decision making, reporting, communications, and risk management.

Northland’s young entrepreneurs have surpassed their own record this year, with more teams, more students and more schools participating in this year’s Young Enterprise Scheme than any other region.

To date, 66 Northland teams have been registered – a 20 percent increase from last year. These teams involve 265 students and represent 20 schools. By comparison, Auckland’s North Shore – the next highest contributor – has 45 teams (the Auckland area is treated as four separate regions). Canterbury has 43, Waikato has 41 and Wellington has 38.

ENDS

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