Te Puke High School enterprise students put through their paces

Ekkjot Mallhi, left, and Sukhman Kaur of Big City Waffle Fries at Te Puke High School's market day.

Budding entrepreneurs from years 10 to 13 have been testing themselves in different ways at Te Puke High School this month.

Year 10 and 11 enterprise students competed in the BP Challenge at the start of the month, year 13 Young Enterprise students are nearly halfway through a year-long programme that covers the journey from starting to winding up a business, and on Monday the school held its annual market day.

The market day sees enterprise students selling their wares, and the Young Enterprise students showcasing their products.

The three-day BP Challenge is a mini version of the long-form Young Enterprise Scheme.

"It's specifically for Year 10 and 11 students to give them a taster for what Young Enterprise will be," says social science and business teacher Steph Davids. "They are essentially given a crash course with very limited direction about what their product is."

Whatever teams decide to make must be safe, legal, appropriate for school and environmentally friendly.

"From there they each give themselves a role within the business, whether they want to be the CEO, finance, marketing and so on."

Sukhnoor Kaur, left, and Prabjyot Kaur's stall at Te Puke High School's Market Day was KK Shakes.

The challenge culminates with students pitching their ideas to local business people and entrepreneurs.

"They pitched their products to six judges - a bit like speed dating - so by the time they got to their sixth presentation, they were pros."

Of the nine groups, Lopsided, creating adjustable bras for all shapes and sizes, won the BP Challenge.

Market day on Monday was an assessed project and was heavily food-oriented.

"[Students] have spent this term researching what products they are going to sell. At our school, it's a lot easier to do food because we don't have a canteen so there are [usually] a lot of food stalls."

This year there are five Young Enterprise Scheme teams at the high school.

The teams began their projects during term 1 with the first challenge - validation.

"That's where they have to do some market research - get out and talk to people and see if their product's actually viable or not.

The second challenge, earlier this term, was to pitch their ideas and market day on Monday was a chance to launch their products.

The businesses include TCOJ Trading producing Spirit Packs, offering packages of matching T-shirts, face paint, ribbon and tutus in each of the school's colours, Sustainabag, making a vegan-friendly tote bags, Candle Aura making relaxation-inducing scented candles and Aimless Soaps, offering soaps designed to encourage children to use them.

The pitches were done at Tinkd Makerspace in Tauranga.

"The pitches went very well. The judges were highly impressed with our students," says Steph.

Other challenges for the Young Enterprise students will include more promotion and sales and completing an annual review.

"That's a summary of how the whole process has gone throughout the year, how much money they made, was it profit or loss, and then send off their full business plan for judging."