Winter Wonder Ornaments
What is your Product?
Our enterprise group is called Winter Wonder Ornaments. The product is a beautiful recycled wine bottle decorated for Christmas. We sourced the bottles from family and local business'. We created the product by cleaning the wine bottles and decorating them with snowmen using felt, some holly leaves using paint and then some ribbon to decorate the bottle. Finally we add fairy lights inside the bottle to create the perfect Christmas ornament for any home.
Who is Involved?
James Oisin and Killian are the founders of Winter Wonder. We are transition year students with a great interest in the practical subjects in school. We wanted to create something that we would enjoy doing so that's where Winter Ornaments came from.
Who is your Target Market?
Our product was made for the older generation as they would be more likely to buy ornaments for their homes, rather than the 1st or 2nd year students in our school. Our product is an ideal present for anybody at any age and is a cheap and affordable gift. Whilst in school, we really targeted the staff members at Scoil Mhuire Strokestown.
Where did you get your idea from?
We got the idea for our product from a wine bottle ornament that was gifted a few years ago. Our bottles are different from the bottle we got the idea from one was painted on and ours were made from different coloured felt.
We went around to our teachers neighbours and local shops to get as many orders and sales as possible. We got our business idea from a similar product.
Our product was different from the familiar ones because we used felt instead of paint.
What Market Research did you carry out?
Online research played a big role in our enterprise. We did a lot of brainstorming in the early stages. Brainstorming helped us to think as a group and see what each of us wanted to do. After a lot of deliberation, we believe we picked the best idea. Our other idea was handcrafted woodwork ornaments but the product was working out to expensive for us to start and it would have been more time consuming. With the higher prices and the time needed, we knew that it would be difficult to make make a profit.
When we decided on the decorative bottles, we used google to see if there were any other similar products on the market. We researched what materials we would need and we compare prices. We did some primary research such as approaching potential customers to identify if they would buy our product and how much they would be willing to pay. Our competitors were dearer and very basic. From our research, we found that people would buy our product for around the 10euro mark, so this influenced us to reduce our costs as much as possible. We made decisions such as using felt materials instead of paint.
What Marketing and promotion did you do?
We went around to teachers students and neighbours to see if they would buy our product. We used the 4 P's Product, Promotion, Price and Place to achieve our objectives. We wanted a product that would stand out from the other products in our school. As our product is a seasonal product, we knew we needed to make a lot of sales before the Christmas. We depended on word of mouth in the staff room for sales from teachers and then we created posters to hang up around the school.
What is the cost per bottle?
Each ornament cost 10euro.
How can customers pay?
We accept cash only. Payment to be made with order.
Personal Development
Taking part in the student enterprise program has helped us learn how teamwork is important and that running a business takes a lot of work.