Three Oak Bay High students have been putting their entrepreneurial skills to the test with a new reusable cup business.
Developed by long-time friends and soccer teammates Georgia Fraser, Aislyn Coward and Kate Wiebe, Sip N' Style offers customizable tumblers to those looking for Yeti and Stanley alternatives.
The 15-year-olds' venture began this year in their grade 10 business and entrepreneurship class where their teacher Rob Kinnear tasked them with building a real company from scratch.
“Mr. Kinnear had told us that we should find something sustainable and reliable and something that people would want,” said Fraser. “We feel like [reusable cups are] good for the environment and for a lot of people, they like to look for sustainability in stuff they buy.”
Unlike store-bought tumblers, the trio's are customizable. When ordering cups, customers submit a form where they can request custom designs. Then, using a Cricut machine, the young business people print stickers that they paste onto tumblers.
“We've actually been very successful,” said Coward. “We broke even within the first two days, and now we're just making profits.”
In just a few months, the friends have sold 54 cups, profiting a whopping $800, and they have only a few more to move before running out of stock.
Though extra pocket change is nothing to scoff at, the students’ ultimate goal with this project was to snag on-the-ground business operations and ownership experience.
“It was really nice to have a class where you could actually get tools that you're not going to learn otherwise for life,” said Coward. “Science and math and stuff like that, it's helpful, but you're actually going to use this in your day-to-day life, which is really cool.”
Coward also cited this project as helpful in strengthening her work ethic.
“When someone fills out an order form and they send you money, it's not like it's just an assignment that you can put off until later,” she said. "You have to respond and you have to be able to sound professional in an email, and you have to be on top of it, and it teaches some sort of responsibility.”
Fraser, assigned the role of Sip N' Style's marketing manager, learned how to identify target markets in Kinnear’s class – a lesson that ultimately led to the trio’s savvy decision to sell the tumbler cups on Instagram and Facebook.
“We did some market research and we sent out a form for everybody to fill out, and we looked at the people who filled out the form, and it was mostly moms,” she said. “I assumed that on Facebook, and especially Oak Bay Local, there would be a lot of them and they would be really interested.”
As for the girls' future, only time will tell if the entrepreneurial success they experienced will spark future ventures.
“I've had a couple of businesses before, and I'm really interested in running any more when the opportunity comes up,” said Fraser, who has sold hand-made jewellery at Kidovate – a youth entrepreneurship market in Victoria – in years past. “We just wanted a successful business and we wanted the experience out of it if we plan to do anything similar in the future.”
For Coward, Sip N' Style has exposed a path she may later decide to walk.
“I have no idea what I want to do after school, but I never really considered business as something I'd want to do before, but definitely after taking this course, it's definitely an option,” she said.
