Lancashire Evening Post:
A group of innovative business scholars have hit on a winning idea and are now looking to turn it into reality. The Myerscough College Business students have won the national enterprise competition, Make Your Mark Challenge, with their Pimp My Wheelchair idea.
Team Turnaround beat off tough competition from thousands of young biz brains across the country to win £3,000 for the college, £100 each in music vouchers and a trophy.
The theme of the challenge was – Make life fun and earn a ton – so the students had to think of a fun, money making idea. They put together a product proposal, marketing strategy and financial projections to make it into the final and win the competition. The young entrepreneurs are Hannah Corkish, aged 18 from Garstang, Zoe Catterall, aged 17 from Garstang, Andrew Norman, aged 16 from Carlisle and Joe Edwards, aged 17 from Preston.
The teenagers were invited on an all expenses paid trip to London to the national final after making it into the last 10 teams in the Further Education category.
Their winning idea, Pimp My Wheelchair, is a service to wheelchair users of all ages to add extra accessories and trimmings to complement individual lifestyle needs.
During the final, the team was required to develop their idea from previous stages of the competition including developing a PR launch, and considering how social enterprise and innovation could be weaved into their business idea.
They then had 2 minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. Among the panel were Matt Littler, who plays Max Cunningham in the teen soap Hollyoaks, Brent Hoberman, founder of lastminute.com and the award-winning entrepreneur, Christina Domecq of Spinvox.
The judges were so impressed with the concept of Pimp My Wheelchair that they have encouraged the students to develop it for the market place.
The students’ course tutor, Joanne Ingham, said: ‘We are absolutely delighted and thrilled with the result. This success has reinforced our commitment to promoting and developing enterprise and innovation at Myerscough.
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