Ultra Jerseys

What is the product?

Our student enterprise is providing stylish lightweight jerseys to Scoil Mhuire. We have designed both a fashionable yet practical jersey that both girls and boys can wear when representing the school.

Our jerseys not only come in one but two colors (pink/blue) to appeal to a wider range of people. In designing our jerseys we have ensured to use a good quality dependable supplier to guarantee the best quality for our customers. We also offer the choice of adding initials to our customers free of charge to add a personal touch to the jersey. 

Our jerseys are perfectly designed for both students and teachers to use during school related activities or non uniform days. For example P.E, School sports and other school related activities and also allows non-athlete students to feel included in the sporting community in school

Where did your idea come from?

We are very active in all sports  both in and out of school. We struggle to find comfortable lightweight jerseys to wear to help us reach our full potential whilst playing. We created Ultra Jerseys to stop this. Our jerseys are both stylish and comfortable.

In class we spoke with our classmates and teacher about different colours and styles that could potentially work for our jerseys. Brainstorming and research helped us gain information on our target market and were very helpful in the early stages of the business. We also used online research to help us gain information on what suppliers would offer us the best quality and price.

At first we were going to buy our jerseys from DS Sports however we decided against this as we found the designs and customer service was better at O'Reilly's.  

Who is involved?

Aishling and Georgia and Fiona, We are three very sporty and active people who have achieved a lot both on and off the sports field. We usually wear sports jerseys as we are GAA players, therefore Ultra Jersey is the perfect enterprise for us. 

What is the price of your product?

€35 EURO

We insured to collect payment before we ordered the jerseys. This meant that we did not need any start-up for our enterprise. We were paying 28 euro per jersey and priced them at 35 as we found that it was a fair price whilst still making a profit. We were delighted to make 7 euro profit on each jersey purchased.

What market research did you carry out?

We carried out most of our research during class time. Primary research was our most effective type of research as we depended on the opinion of our peers and school mates. Our main finding was that black jerseys was most preferable, as our friends found that most of the school wear they own were blue or amber, and when we displayed different options, black came out on top.  After we made the decision to go for a black base colour, we wanted to add in an option of pink or blue lines to appeal to both male and female customers. We also asked our friends if they would like to have initials or not on their jerseys. Nearly everyone we asked said they would prefer to have the initials on the jersey so this was something we had to inquire about. 

Our secondary research consisted of speaking to the 5th years who did a similar enterprise last year. We asked them what suppliers they used and what companies they recommended. This was a great help when researching what supplier best suited our enterprise budget. 

Who were your target market?

Our target market is students from 1st to 4th year and the teachers in our school. We identified our market by carrying our market research. 1st year and 4th year students were most interested in our product. 

Who were your Competitors?

We learned early on that another group had decided to sell Jerseys for their enterprise. This was a challenge we faced and we really had to consider changing our idea. However, we felt that we had designed a nicer and better jersey for our customers so we decided to stick with our product.

Our competitors were offering their jerseys at a cheaper price however if you wanted your initials on it, the price increased. This meant their jersey initially looked cheaper but as most people went for initials the jersey was more expensive than ours.

We knew we had to work really hard to promote our enterprise and make it stand out. We focused on our Instagram page to promote our jersey to our friends. We also hung up posters displaying the jerseys and we spoke to the different school sports teams to purchase our jersey. 

How did you promote your product? 

We used mainly Instagram to promote our product. As most of us have a large following of people from our school on Instagram, we shared pictures and polls to help students notice our product. We also advertised by hanging up posters around the school. 

Did you encounter any Problems?

The first problem we encountered was that there was another enterprise group doing jerseys. We tackled this problem by advertising our jerseys first and designing the best jersey as possible. We made over 70 sales. 

Personal Development

We all worked well together as we all wanted the best for our business. This helped us not to have disagreements. We learned that hard work pays off. There was a lot of organisation skills required to ensure orders were met and the correct amount of money was collected. The most important thing for us was communicating with each other about everything. We learned that there are many skills and characteristics required to be a successful entrepreneur.