Budding entrepeneurs!
Your costume and dressing up woes will soon be over! Our Year 11 Certificate III in Business students are about to launch “Costume Corner” at the Carramar Campus!
Previously a group of generous parent volunteers offered this low-cost service to other St Stephen’s School parents looking for costumes for events like Book Week.
When the opportunity to take this venture over emerged, our Vocational Education and Training (VET) staff jumped at the opportunity! VET staff member, Jordan Torquato, is now working with his Year 11 students to turn “Costume Corner” into a viable, compliant and successful little business.
“We are beginning the process with eight groups developing and presenting their own business plans for “Costume Corner” covering issues like branding, marketing, risk management and stock control”, said Jordan.
Jordan and the class will then take the best ideas from all presentations to develop one, unified plan for “Costume Corner”.
“This approach requires students to apply not only their business management knowledge but also their presentation skills to persuade the class – and me – of the strength and validity of their proposals”, continued Jordan.
Kyral Bartels is one of the students who is hoping that some of her team’s ideas will make it into the final business plan for “Costume Corner. The team includes Kyra, Alisha Harrison, Kathleen Smith and Isla Brown. A great deal of thinking went into the team’s presentation.
“There were definitely a lot of challenges we needed to consider when we were developing our plan. Firstly, we had to figure out how to make the products appealing to children, but then we also needed to come up with cost effective ideas to make a good customer experience so people will feel welcome,” said Kyra.
According to Kathleen, “Our plan is to find cheap, affordable storage units to arrange the costumes, and we plan to have them in theme, size and colour order so people can find what they are looking for. We feel that ordering the costumes by colour is more aesthetically pleasing.”
Even though it’s early in the course curriculum, the Certificate III students are building a strong understanding of good business practice. There are lots of strong ideas coming from the class.
“We thought the idea of having a full-size mirror was really good. We didn’t think of that. Then other groups also came up with different storage things like buying racks instead of poles which might make it easier. Another group also had the idea of organising costumes mainly by themes or by specific events which is also a good idea,” said Alisha.
The practical experience is helping the whole class integrate the theory being taught by Jordan as part of the Certificate.
“This project is giving us an understanding of how workplaces operate. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that needs to be done to understand your customers and your costs so you can make the finances work. We’re also seeing exactly why safety is so important in the workplace. From being in the storage area, we can see the hazards and in our plan we can apply what we’ve learnt about how to prevent incidents,” said Isla.
Once the class has developed a plan and budget, they will present this to the Head of Campus, Bennet Andrews, for his endorsement.
“Our hope is that we’re up and running quickly, so that parents can come to our student-run business for all their costume needs”, said Jordan.
“In the future, each Year 11 Certificate III in Business class will take responsibility for “Costume Corner” and continue to evolve and expand the business to suit the shifting needs of their customers.”
Kyra and her team are positive about the future of “Costume Corner”.
“We hope it will be a big thing in our community that everyone knows about. I want people to know that they can get a cheap and affordable costume from us and are so happy that they tell their friends,” said Kyra.
Keep your eyes on the St Stephen’s School social media pages and class blogs! We’ll let you know when “Costume Corner” is officially open for business!