Sterling Young Enterprise group consists of 17 young entrepreneur’s aged 16-18, including myself. Our original and frankly brilliant idea to create cycling helmet covers has recently won us Premier Company in the Chiltern Area Final where we also won the award for best presentation to the judges. We also came second in many other key categories and this of course then led to us winning the whole thing!


Now we are moving on to the Milton Keynes Young Enterprise final! For this prestigious final, we needed a new product to wow the judges other than our original product, the ‘bone-dri helmet cover’. This product is made to enhance safety while cycling as thousands off people are knocked of their bikes by cars every year. The stylish black covers have a luminous yellow stripe down the middle of them that makes you easily identifiable to drivers while cycling. We found that, although this product is unisex, a new cover was needed to be solely aimed at women. This is the breaking news coming from Sterling’s official Facebook page, stating: ‘Sterling is proud to announce that due to popular demand, we will be releasing the pink bone-dri helmet cover for purchase very soon!’ This new product uses the same stylish black covering as before, but this time the luminous part is pink! From this product, we plan to donate around 50% of the profit from the sale of every cover to the John Radcliffe Oncology ward as this is especially close to all of our hearts. This comes after our decision to generously donate almost 50% of our profit to the John Radcliffe Oncology ward a couple of weeks ago. Our new product will go on sale very soon and we are in the process of cutting the materials to be sent to our new outsourcing company where the new products will be produced.


Now, Young Enterprise itself is a challenging, yet rewarding competition to be part of. There is no doubting that applying to be part of Young Enterprise was a great decision for all of us. In the end, when it is all over I’m sure we will all remember the highs of our success and hopefully not the inevitable arguments and fallouts that come with running a real business! Joint managing director Daniel Gentle said that for him, this was ‘an invaluable lesson in people management’, with finance director Mohammed Izagaren adding ‘at first we struggled with the complexities of business finance, although over time we have managed to grasp the key elements of it, which has enabled us to succeed and grow as a business’. This whole experience has been a learning curve of what is like to work in a real business, with a strict hierarchy, teaching many of the group the importance of delegation. In my opinion, my key lesson was that you only get back what you put in, and also how crucial togetherness is in a group environment. I could go on about this fantastic experience, using cliché after cliché, but instead I will finish with this one… We have all loved every minute of it. 

 

 


By Luke Hastings