Now that it’s the holiday season, students have an opportunity to buy sweet treats and start their holiday shopping while still at school.
The second annual Falcon Fair will take place tomorrow in the Special Events Center and Flex Auditorium. It will be open to students from 9 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. and include 30 different student vendors. Students can bring money to school on Market Day to purchase.
“Market day started last year,” BLE pathway teacher Erin Johnston said. “It was a district initiative to do for our junior tech core class for entrepreneurship, which is the junior tech core class for BLE. I’ve loved watching my students come up with their own ideas and get really excited to be able to solve them and make money.”
The process was one that students have been working on all semester.
“Everything that goes into starting their own business is what they’ve been working through all semester, so it culminates into this really cool event where they get to see the fruits of their labor,” Johnston said. “It just is a great way to showcase some of the things that we’re doing in our pathway because this is their junior level class, so a lot of the things that they learned as freshmen and sophomores are coming through here, and they’ve got a lot of the background information.”
To fund their business, students took out microloans from the North Kansas City School District Education Foundation with the expectation that they would repay the loans at the end of the day.
“The students all took out a loan; they had to pitch their idea and be approved for a loan, so the money goes to pay back the loan, but once they pay the loan back, they get to keep all the profit,” Johnston said. “It gives them a real-world experience as far as starting a business because for a lot of them, entrepreneurship is learning to start your own business, but a lot of these students may never actually do that, so this gives them the opportunity to see what that’s like on a super small scale.”
The students are responsible for every aspect of the business.
“They go through the whole process,” Johnston said. “They have to come up with the idea, pitch the idea to get funding, pay back their loan, create everything, set their own prices, and create their own advertising.”
Junior Ellie Browning and her friends will have a booth at the Falcon Fair with prices ranging from $12-$15.
“My product is called Fresh-To-Go kits. It’s like a little kit with everything in it,” Browning said. “It has a hairbrush, hand sanitizer, Tide pen, and everything hygienic like gum. We’re selling it to people to keep in their backpacks or teachers to keep in their desks.”
The students hope to make a difference in the school, along with using it as a learning experience.
“I’m working on it with two of my friends, and originally we weren’t going to do it, but then we realized that we don’t have a lot of this stuff in our backpacks or readily available,” Browning said. “We thought, ‘Why not make this kit and save money by buying it all together to make it cheaper instead of buying it all separately?’ It’s a great way to get involved in the school, and we make flyers and everything.”
After going through the process, the group is excited to see whether their work will pay off.
“I’m most excited to actually set up the stand and see if my business will sell because we had to take out a loan through the school, so we have to see if we make the loan back, so that’s exciting,” Browning said.
For the students, this has been a learning experience.
“The experience has taught me how to buy all the products and sell all the products,” Browning said. “You have to make a certain profit off of it, so we had to figure out how much we would have to sell to be able to make any profit off of our business. We’re going to have to sell a lot to make back our loan.”
Junior Maddy Hunter is leading another business at the Falcon Fair – Falcon Holly Jolly Treats.I’m selling cookies, brownies and cupcakes, and we have dairy and gluten free cookies and gluten free cupcakes,” Hunter said. “My partner, Sarah is making them because she has her food handler’s license, but I’ve been doing everything else like making flyers and am going to package them.”
Similar to the goal of Browning’s booth, Hunter hopes to make an impact with her business.
“I picked this product because I feel like at our school, we don’t really have that many treats that are gluten or dairy free, so I wanted to do something that was fun for the holidays but still inclusive to those with dietary needs,” Hunter said.
Hunter said she’s excited to see if her work will pay off to give her the profit she is hoping for.
“I’m excited to see how our product sells and how much I sell, and I really hope that I get a profit,” Hunter said. “Our loan came out to be about $100 because of all the different ingredients we had to get; all of our treats are all homemade. To make a profit, my business will have to sell a lot.”
