Budding entrepreneurs from three Scottish high schools are going for growth after showing the power of social media.
CityFibre, the Gigabit City builder, is providing additional funds to a trio of businesses which form part of the Young Enterprise Scotland Company Programme.
The top prize of £150 has gone to 10 Scent, which consists of nine students from Lochend Community High School, for the exceptional campaign it ran to promote its hand-poured and eco-friendly soy wax melts.
CityFibre previously sponsored an entire programme and invested in social media training and a specialist workshop for the students involved. The enterprising team at 10 Scent has taken the lessons from the session and grown their social media following and driven awareness of their brand by sharing updates, customer feedback and sneak peeks.
10 Scent’s products are selling well on the Young Enterprise trading platform and have featured in wellbeing packs for local company Peek, and as an extra in senior citizen Christmas hampers from FARE Scotland.
Two other companies also picked up awards; Zoinks run by a team from George Watson’s College for their innovative wire management system and Simply the Zest run by a team from Hazlehead Academy for their product range. Both teams will receive a smaller investment prize to provide a much-needed boost to their business plans.
Elaine Doherty, CityFibre’s Regional Lead for Scotland, said: “Young Enterprise Scotland is helping to shape the next generation of Scottish entrepreneurs. The teams from Lochend, George Watson’s and Hazlehead all grasp just how important digital is to businesses today, whether that is social media or an e-commerce platform. All the winning teams have shown real creativity in how they have developed their products, and everyone at CityFibre looks forward to seeing how they continue to develop in the months ahead.”
Geoff Leask, CEO of Young Enterprise Scotland, added: “Having this support from CityFibre has enabled us to add real value to the Company Programme this year when students have had to adapt to the new reality of working even more in a digital world.”
One of the students from 10 Scent said; “Although we all use social media every day, we were quite unsure before about how to go about using it for business. Getting to hear directly from the experts has really helped us to understand how to better use our social media channels to drive forward those all-important Christmas sales through YE Trading Station.”
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