Page 18 - royal-times-13-14

1ST yeAR Mini CoMpAnieS

Our company was set up In September 2013 our
in September 2013 by James Business teacher, Mr.
Grier, Conor Tobin and Stuart Robertson told the first
Doughty. years about Mini Companies,
so I gave thought about
Mr Robertson had given a doing it. A couple days later
talk to the first years and gave I approached Mr. Robertson with an idea for a maths
us the idea for our business. website aimed for all ages, he approved of the idea and
So we formed the company then I approached David about joining my company and
called The Birdhouse Boys.
we decided to call our Mini Company ‘Maths Tips and Tricks’.
We each decided to make products separately so they I started developing the website immediately and asked
would be made faster and with more variety. James made David to write out some tricks and tips. In January 2014
birdhouses, Stuart made pencil holders and teapot stands our website was running and we had received over ten
and Conor made shelves. Our parents helped us make the visitors on the first week despite us telling our friends
products.
about it. We watched our website grow and tried to get
We sold our products to our friends and families and we AdSense to accept us to make money but they said our
also attended a craft fair before Christmas in Cavan to website had insufficient content so we kept uploading
help boost our sales. more and more.
One day, Mr Robertson called us out of class and told us In March we had a Mini Company competition and by
that after the mid-term break we would be attending this time our Mini Company had reached over 200 hits.
a competition in the Slieve Russell hotel. We had to The night before the competition we uploaded as much
do a business report for our company and we had to content as we could and hoped for the best the next day.
make products to display at our stand. We went to the The day of the competition had finally arrived and we
competition and set up our stand with our products on the arrived at 8:30 am. After half an hour of preparing our
table. We were very pleased with how our display looked. stand we were ready and the judges finally came around.
After half an hour the judges came around and looked at We talked about the future potential of our website and
our products. Unfortunately, we didn’t win anything but how people from all around the world had visited our
we had a great day and learnt a lot from the experience.
website and showed them it. The judging had ended
We plan on attending local fairs and Christmas markets to and we had been asked to make our way to a hall where
sell our products as gifts ... hopefully The Birdhouse Boys the awards were given out. Our name was called out for
will be around for a long time. Best Innovation and we were feeling quite ecstatic as our

By Conor Tobin picture was taken on stage with Mr. Robertson.
A couple of weeks later we had received a grand prize of
100 euros from the competition. Overall I think this was a
good experience for David and I, we learned how to set
up our own Mini Company and we had a lot of fun with it.

By Adam Syed.

18 The Royal Times 2013-2014