Students in Fermoy's Coláiste achieve mini-company success
New View Calendars, a TY Mini Company in Coláiste an Chraoibhín, Fermoy won the Best Sales award at the Student Enterprise awards, held in Springfort Hall earlier this week.
Almost 30 Mini Company teams from across the north Cork region attended the awards ceremony to compete for honours.
Of the 35 groups that took part in the Mini Company programme in the school, three of them attended the regional finals; New View Calendars (calendars of Fermoy area), Crave Care (who produced wellbeing candles and cosmetics) and CAC Jerseys (who designed and created the first CAC sports jersey).
The students involved that won, Niall Fitzgerald, David McSweeney and Lewis Potter, set up their Mini Company at the start of Transition Year in September. After much research, they decided to produce calendars that highlighted all the beauty around their locality of Fermoy. Next, they sought sponsorship from local businesses to fund the share capital necessary to set up this enterprise.
In addition, it was important to the students that they use a local business, Fermoy Print and Design, to print the calendars.
To sell and promote the calendar, they attended the school open night, set up a stand outside Toss Bryan’s after school, set up a stall at the TY Christmas market and stocked their calendar in Bermingham’s Shop.
All this hard work paid off as they needed to carry out two print runs in order to keep up with the demand. Not only were they sold in the local area, but orders came in from around the world, as far away as Australia!
Furthermore, the students felt passionate about supporting a great cause and therefore donated half their profits to Irish Cancer Research.
“Coláiste an Chraoibhín are very proud of the students for all the hard work and effort that went into the setup and running of this business. They would also like to say a special thank you to all the local businesses that supported, not only these students, but all our students, in their venture," a spokesperson for the school said.
“A strong local community like this is of great benefit to all our students. We would also like to acknowledge the hard work that goes on in all our mini-company groups throughout the year”.