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Student entrepreneurs reap financial rewards
Six students turned a $5 investment into
a $2,000 profit in just 10 days last month to win the 2002
Peter Thomas Innovation Project Award in the UVic business
faculty’s entrepreneurship program annual competition.
The team of Chris Jones, Jamie Sulek, Wes
Baker, Mike Booth, Cher Chen and Clayton Ho combined two projects
for their company’s winning effort. They promoted a special
evening at Legends nightclub and earned about $700 in cover
charge revenue, and also sold advertising space in a coupon
book for students and young tourists distributed by UVic and
Tourism Victoria. This generated $1,334.87 in profit with
another $450 pending.
The runner-up team of Graeme Sykes, Dan Skillings,
Naomi LeBihan, Sarah Barrett, Detrich Wedegartner and Shawn
Preece-Hall developed a series of custom thank-you, holiday
greeting and customer contact cards designed to incorporate
digital photos of a client’s staff in cartoon layouts.
The team made $542 in 10 days on their $5 investment, but
had another $7,000 in orders on their books.
The innovation project is the first project
students tackle in the faculty’s award-winning summer
entrepreneurship program — one of the areas of concentration
offered by the bachelor of commerce program. The contest is
sponsored by Peter H. Thomas, founder of Century 21 Canada
and the author of several books on being a successful entrepreneur.
“It makes me proud to see this kind
of initiative in our youth and their continuing commitment
to opening the windows of opportunity that guarantee the future
of young Canadian business,” says Thomas. He’ll
present the award-winning team with a plaque on June 10.
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