For the past 3 years, I’ve been in touch with a chap called Michael Tasker up in the Lothian region of Scotland who mentors a team competing in the Young Enterprise initiative each year. The competition is for 16-18 year olds, and requires them to start and run a real business for 6 months or so, selling real products or services. It’s a great experience for all concerned. My daughter was involved last year. She was M.D of a company that reached the National finals despite (or perhaps as a result of!) not asking my advice once.
Anyway, Michael was telling me about his team this year, and I love the concept. They called themselves, ‘Creative’ and here’s their website:
The product is Crayons – called ‘Crayzies’ – fashioned into fun shapes and created by melting down and re-shaping old discarded crayons that they had begged, borrowed or stolen….well maybe not stolen. Once they exhausted the supply of old used crayons for recycling they went to Asda and cleared the shelf of a discontinued line of stick crayons, achieving a big discount off the price.
Michael described it as ‘money for old rope’, and I suppose it is. But the key thing is that they’ve added value by turning old rope into something fun, interesting and useful. Surely there have to be myriad opportunities to do the same thing with other products which have outlived their usefulness. Inspiration here for everyone, I think.
Anyway, take a look at the website and get in touch with the team if you’d like to buy some crayons. A good proportion of their profits will go to charity, so you’ll be helping both a very entrepreneurial team and a good cause at the same time.
