Wireless earbud headphones, an all-in-one bread and butter knife and recycled candles. These were just some of the award-winning ideas at the seventh annual Dragons’ Den luncheon Wednesday afternoon at the Okanagan College cafeteria in Vernon.
The youth entrepreneur competition featured 16 teams from across the school district chasing $2,000 in prizes. Entries went through two stages of business planning and presentations in front of a judging panel comprising local business owners. Topics covered included product innovation, marketing and finance.
“I was really impressed with the quality and calibre of the students,” said Andrew Klingel, an Okanagan College business administration professor who helped oversee the competition.
“I’m an entrepreneur myself and I know how hard it is to come up with an idea and how hard it is to present it to judges.”
Taking first place and $1,000 was the CPL Group – Kevin Cameron, Melanie Perron and Jim Lagerquist of Lumby’s Charles Bloom Secondary. The trio is developing wireless earbud headphones under the brand name Zephyr. They will be the first of their kind on the market.
“We wanted to make something versatile that’s for anybody,” said Cameron, who is enrolled in Bloom’s business management class.
“People from different walks of life do different activities. “It’s (headphones) for anything you’d use wireless headphones for – listening to music, going for a run, anything where you don’t want to be encumbered by annoying wires.”
Perron said the competition has opened her eyes to the world of business, something she never considered as a career path.
“Numbers and accounting have always scared me, but this has helped open the door to some of the accounting stuff,” she said.
“This is a life skill. It helps us with the management of our own lives, our own personal investments and what we want to do.”
Added Lagerquist: “We wouldn’t get an opportunity to go out and create a product and try and sell it as if we’re in the business world. We’ve learned a lot and hopefully one day we go somewhere with this.
“A lot of the stuff we’re doing right now we haven’t really encountered in any other class.”
The Zephyr crew credited Charles Bloom business teacher Scott Belshaw for his guidance.
Second place and $500 went to 14-year-old Vernon Secondary student Ava Ready, who developed a fashion line called Accent Accessories. Some of her pieces include bow tie-style hair clips and other accessories made from recycled buttons.
The third-place winner the Fulton Secondary team of Athena Nguyen and Katie Posak. They collected $250 for their Candle Cups company, which recycles old candles and reforms them in second-hand tea cup, jars and other containers.
“My mom made them and her mom made them and she just kind of passed it down,” said Nguyen. “It was something we could bond over.”
Nguyen has a candle recycling program set up at her school, plus her friends and families also donate their old candles. She buys cups and containers from the Salvation Army and Upper Room Mission as a way to give back to community.
Nguyen said the competition has really helped her self-confidence.
“I’ve learned so much from this and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback,” she said. “It’s made me really confident because more of an introverted person and this has made me more confident in myself.”
A $250 Innovation Award went to the CT Partnership – Lumby’s Calvin Tourand and Corey Tinney – for their Bread & Butter Knife.
Serrated on one side and rounded on the other, the knife offers the convenience of being able to slice bread and butter it, all in one.
Dragons’ Den is a collaborative effort between the college, its student business organization Enactus, Community Futures North Okanagan and School District No. 22.
Other community sponsors include City of Vernon, Romei Plummer LLP, Kal Tire, BDO, AcuTruss Industries, VSS, Meyers Norris Penny LLP and Zoe Stevens Notary.
