Thursday, September 12, 2019

3A My Entrepreneurship Story.

I used to live in my native country Colombia up until 2015. Back there it was against the rules to sell anything in the school, but that didn't stop some of the students to sell their goods. I first stumble into this idea while I was riding back home on the school bus, one of the older students was asking everyone if they wanted a Mcdonald's hamburger for $5,000 pesos for which comparing it into dollars it would be $5. Now, $5 for one of the cheapest hamburgers (these are the ones that cost $1) is a lot, so I thought, nobody will ever buy anything to her. Nevertheless, she sold all of the hamburgers that day.

So at that time, I decided to dig into the subject by asking my sister, who previously had sold cookies at her school. She told me she gained three times the amount of money she invested on the cookies, this attracted my attention since who doesn't want to have extra money? So I went for it, I took some money I had saved to buy 30 cookies from a local bakery at $0.70 each, I bought 100 plastic bags for the cookies for $10 and I closed each bag with a lighter once I placed the cookie inside.

I decided to start selling them at $3 to see how it went, but I came to realize that I had competitors already selling different cookies at only $2. This, of course, affected the business since only my friends bought my cookies, so I lowered the price to $2.5 with the excuse that my cookies were huge and my competitor's where more like subway's cookies. Believe it or not, it worked, by the third period of each day I had sold a lot if not all the cookies and had I won more than twice the amount it cost me to buy and package each cookie. My little business became so popular that even teachers bought from me, even though it was "illegal".

But all good stories have an ending, 8 months later the idea started to fall since nobody wanted cookies no more. My own school started selling cookies at the store and a lot cheaper, so it wasn't worth to fight against them. I took the decision to stop selling, but I was happy it worked for some time.

Image result for big chocolate chip cookies

I'm taking Entrepreneurship so I can be able to see opportunities when they present to me. I want to try and see in the eyes of an entrepreneur and be able to say "it is a good idea to get involved in this" or not...

2 comments:

  1. Wow this is so interesting. Selling cookies on campus is something I did in the past before but in middle school. I stopped because I literally would spend my profits on dumb things like candy and junk food. I'm glad this experience gave you a glimpse of what entrepreneurship is in the real world. It's all about meeting a need and making a profit but of course it is not easy especially if you have competitors in your case. Now you can think about what you want to do in the future but make sure you do research prior.

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  2. Hey Juan,

    Your entrepreneurship story is exciting to say the least. I enjoyed the fact that you were able to see an opportunity and go for it, and at such a young age too. However, the most inspiring part of your story is how you realized when to cut your losses and close up shop. That is a very tough but smart move to make when you're aware of the competition getting stronger.

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