$20 Boss Market – Amin Arefi

My Group & I at the $20 Boss Market – (From Left-Right – Jarvis, Ethan, Evan & I)

What is $20 Boss?

*The Design Thinking Process deriving our ideas and thoughts throughout the program*.

The $20 Boss Program is a Program promoting Innovation and Creativity, by designing, planning and finally creating products to sell at a market. It is an Innovation and Entrepreneurship program that was one of the options in Semester One for InnovatED. It started with a re-visitation to the familiar Design Thinking Structure from Project Utopia which includes brainstorming concepts associated with Design Thinking and doing a Design Sprint with the assistance of our other group members. In your group, each member in the group received a total of $20 dollars each, hence the name “$20 Boss”, to contribute to making and buying materials to produce our products. Throughout the $20 Boss program, we were introduced to the concept of a “scrum”, which was a physical to-do list that we used to mark off the following: To Do – In Progress – Done. We used as a useful tool to keep track of what we have completed and what we need to do, and this helped us to work collaboratively and effectively. We were also required to write a pitch with our group collectively and potential product, in order to receive a loan so that we acquire $20 each to produce our product and sell it at the Runway Market, which took place on the 16th of June at Wanju.

My Experience and Team

In the $20 boss program, I was involved with a group of Ethan, Evan, Jarvis and Myself. Our company was called “The Drip Co.”, emphasising our focus on drippy and melting designs on our T-Shirts. My group had decided to work on unique T-shirts that included a fascinating dripping effect on the designs, as seen in the designs in the Market Photo. Our Idea was then approved by our Facilitators Miss Shaw & Ms Strentz, and we continued our journey on! Then, we all collaborated as a team further designed improved our product through the weeks in Term 2. We then made sessions with Ms Strentz and Mrs Brookland to begin creating our product together, using a shirt-making technique called screen-printing.

Screen printing is the process of transferring a stencilled design onto a flat surface using a mesh screen, ink and a squeegee. Fabric and paper are the most commonly screen-printed surfaces, which is what we used as our shirts were fabric, but with specialised inks it’s also possible to print onto wood, metal, plastic, and even glass. the results of the screen-prints turned out very well from our efforts and the final products look very nice and sold pretty well in the market as well. Around Week 5-6 in Term 2, We also had the opportunity to sell our products outside of school and expand our businesses. Finally, at the end of Term 2, we had the opportunity to sell our products at a market put together at the school, at Wanju on the 16th of June and we sold an total amount of about 7 T-shirts which made us a total of about $84 at the end of the market. It was a pretty sound market for us as we received a lot of customer attention from the products we sold and the pre-orders we received, and interest as people loved our T-shirts.

*Me (right) and Ethan (left) at our $20 Boss Stall At the Market on 16th of June at Wanju*

ASC Capabilities

*Our Final Ad, as also presented in the Market Photograph.*

In this project, my group and I had to rely on and develop the capabilities of problem solving, organisation, resilience, and creativity to develop our T-Shirt product. I used creativity to develop the product and ideate, I used problem solving when trying to come up with ideas for how to do things such as developing skills in screen-printing and the overall process of making the shirts. I used resilience when some strategies were not suitable and was determined to find a new way to do it. Also I used organisation by using the “scrum” concept and by efficiently attaining materials and things needed to produce our T-shirts. I could have also used the capability of effective communication throughout my team to work more effectively and as this would have helped to involve all the group members in the production of our unique T-shirts and to therefore produce them more and which better efficiency as well.

Our Feedback

During the market, We received a lot of good feedback throughout, such as for our products: Appearance, Quality, Price & Packaging, on several “Product Feedback” Forms!

Some of the Feedback we received during the Market

Our Designs

The following are some of the designs that our group had produced and are looking forward to produce more of these T-shirts very soon!

Conclusion and Opinions

In conclusion, I really enjoyed $20 Boss and it was real challenge at times and very fun at the same time. I really enjoyed how it developed many of your skills such as, teamwork, organisation and screen-printing (for me). $20 Boss has been really enjoyable so far and I have learnt and developed many important skills!

OUR “THE DRIP CO.” LOGO!