Enterprise Week

The apprentice challenge was a university run competition themed on the television programme. The aim was to get into groups of 6 and each group were given £200 of money from a local business. In my group there was myself, John, Lynne, Chris, Francine and Hannah. Our team name was SMARTYPANTS.




Round 1

The first round consisted of having a designated area in High Wycombe town centre, where we had to buy doughnuts and sell as many as we could and make a profit. We purchased 200 jam doughnuts from tescos at 20p per doughnut, and sold them on for roughly 40p per doughnut.


We were located just next door to tescos in the eden centre and split ourselves into two teams. One team was directly next to tescos and the other group next was further into the eden centre.

Everyone made a great effort in flogging the doughnuts, alongside selling the doughnuts, starbucks very generiuosly lent us and urn of coffee. We then gave an offer to the public of a coffee with every two doughnuts purchased. This really helped our sales, as people were paying for two doughnuts just to have the coffee as it would be cheaper than going to starbucks. Even though the day started slowly, it picked up as the day went on and finished the day by selling all 200 doughnuts.



Round 2

We came 2nd in the first round, which sent us through to the 2nd round. This started off with us having to pitch and idea for a market stall in the eden shopping, to their management. We came up with an pitch to sell doughnuts again as it worked for us in the first round, but also to sell christmas cards, cakes and again free coffee from starbucks.

The team went flat out to acquire customers to our stall. We were located at the front of the eden centre and near the student halls, so this was ideal as we were able to sell to students as well as the normal high wycombe public. By the end of the day we had sold every item on our table and had made it through to the final.



Round 3

The third and final round was to hold an evening event at the universities student union bar. We
came up with an idea to hold a James Bond themed night. We decided to come up with this idea because we had access to casino tables, roulette wheels and James Bond memoribilia. Also, extra things like vodka shots and a James Bond guys and girls auction made this event an attractive proposition.

The night was a huge success. It took a while for the event to pick up, but when it did, all the vodka shots were sold out, the casino and roulete wheel was always busy, and we made nearly £100 on the auction alone. By the end of the night we were confident of victory. When the news was announced we had won, the celebrations started, and a what ended up as a memorable night for everyone involved.