Student entrepreneurs impress local judges with business ideas

To celebrate ‘Global Entrepreneurship Week’, the whole of Frome College Year 9 took part in an enterprise challenge. 

The Frome Independent market set them a brief of creating a business pitch for a product or service to sell at the March 2016 market.

The students worked in teams within their tutor groups. They had a series of heats to get through before one team was chosen to represent each of the five houses in the final.

The final pitch was done like ‘Dragons’ Den’ whereby the teams had to face seven ‘Dragons’ to pitch their ideas.  The judges were the market director Tabitha Clayson, the Frome Independent finance manager, Liz Andrew, Frome Mayor Kate Bielby, market founder and venture capitalist Gavin Eddy, Enterprise coordinator Rose Hiron-Grimes, Sixth Form student business manager, Harry Foreman, and College Principal, Gavin Ball.

The judges were very impressed with the ideas from the students and found it so difficult to choose one winning idea so they chose three ideas to go through to the market, one winner and two runners up teams.

Tabitha said, “All the teams displayed great confidence, passion and originality, and the market is very much looking forward to working with the winning teams to help bring their ideas to life in the market.”

The Frome Independent have very kindly given a start-up grant of £150 to the winning team and offered start-up loans of £100 each to the other two. The teams will be mentored by the market management team and through the ‘Next Steps’ team at college to develop their business idea ready for March.

During the afternoon the Year 9 students also had the opportunity to work with local organisation Edventure, looking at social enterprise and thinking about ideas for the theme ‘How can we tackle waste food with entrepreneurial ideas?’.

Enterprise coordinator Rose Hiron-Grimes said, “We are really proud of how hard our students worked throughout the day. There were some really excellent ideas and they all showed entrepreneurial talent and skills.

“We are lucky to have many examples of entrepreneurship in the Frome area and would like to thank Edventure, The Frome Independent Market and stall holders and other local businesses for their help, support and inspiration for the next generation of entrepreneurs at Frome College.”