On Wednesday the 16th of June, 2021, I took part in an Innovate ED program called $20 Boss. $20 Boss is where you get into groups and receive 20 dollars each. You then have to use many different design thinking processes that will help you develop an idea that you can sell at markets. Our group went through many different products but ended up making laser-cut keychains. In my group, I had Simba, Xander, Max, and me. We were then thinking and making many designs that we can cut but were having some problems with copyright. After a long time of thinking, we decided that we would laser cut letters for people’s names as it wasn’t copyrighted and we thought that it would sell well. Me and one of the other group members went to bunnings on the weekend and bought the keyrings. After making those outlines and getting ready to cut I stayed a couple of days after school and got the cutting done. We had some problems with how easily it would break on the vulnerable parts. The vulnerable parts were where the hole for the ring was and the outside as we thought it might snap. After changing the design a bit we came up with our final product. While I was doing all the cutting Simba was making posters and Xander was making an excel document to keep track of purchases and sales.

Market

The market was in the morning and I went early to set up. Not long after that, all our group members were there and we started the market. It started slow with a few sales but we got running and we started selling more. We had sold out of a product that a customer wanted and they placed an order. We sold lots of our stock and made a solid profit so that we didn’t have to pay any money back to the school that gave us the loan.

What we learnt

Overall it was a very fun project and we learned a lot. Although there were many challenges along the way our team persevered and got through it. After the challenges, there was always a bright side which was either getting through a hard time or getting through to a fun time.