By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
A new rocket-powered ice cream truck might bring you ice cream from the moon someday if some ambitious entrepreneurs from Wilson Elementary have anything to say about it.
Hays High DECA students are celebrating entrepreneurship this week with an elementary student product build and a speaker.
DECA at Wilson
With the aid of DECA students, the first-grade students drew their creations Wednesday. On Friday, they will build the products out of Legos, present to the class and explain where they would sell their products.
One group of Wilson students created a rocket-powered ice cream truck that would sell alien ice cream.
Another group drew pictures of cherry, strawberry and other food-shaped inflatables for swimming pools.
Another group developed their own Fortnite characters, while two other groups drew images of various designs for jets and airplanes.
“We are trying to promote entrepreneurship around the community,” Madelyn Waddell, junior DECA student, said. “We wanted to use Legos for the kids to express their creativity. We picked the first graders because they are in the middle of learning how to add up money and learning how to use their creativity to put it on paper or build it somehow.”
Although the cost of the students’ projects were supposed to be limited to $5, the students differed greatly on how much they thought their products should sell for.
One group of students who designed jets thought their planes should cost between $100 and $900.
Whereas the students who designed the Fortnite characters thought their in-game purchases should cost “$2,000 billion.”
On Wednesday, the HHS students also read the first graders a book about a person who was struggling to sell lemonade.
Former DECA student returns to HHS for speech
Also on Wednesday, HHS students were invited to hear Allyson Werth, a former HHS DECA student and recent FHSU grad, talk about her Farmhouse Crafts business.
Werth started her wooden sign business when she was still in college in 2016. She bought a commercial vinyl cutting machine from her father-in-law.
This allowed her to create custom signs for business windows, wooden signs and door mats. She also offers DIY workshops.
Her signs start at about $35 each. Because all of the signs are custom designs, she requires payment in advance.
Although she has sold to people of all ages and genders, she determined her target market was women between 20 to 50 living in the U.S. She has primarily marketed through word-of-mouth and social media, including Facebook and Instagram. She does giveaways through Facebook posts. She also offers coupons to returning customers.
“More than 50 percent of my customers are return customers, so it is very important that my customers are happy and satisfied with the work that I have given them,” she said.
She said community involvement is important. This helps her grow her customer base through personal interactions. She also gets advice from national social groups of other entrepreneurs and crafters.
In 2018, she launched on Etsy and shipped to 15 states. However, the additional cost and labor involved with handling Etsy orders led her to closing that account at the beginning of this year.
Since graduation, Werth has taken a full-time job in addition to her craft business. She said orders tend not to be stable in her business, which makes it difficult for her to rely on that as a sole source of income.
A home business takes a lot of self-discipline, but Werth said she enjoys being able to set her own hours, learn from her business and take on new challenges.
She also said she received a great deal of satisfaction knowing people enjoy her designs and are pleased with her work.
One of her goals is to start a website for her business this year.
“I always tell people to follow your dreams,” she said. “People are always going to say you are never going to make it in the real world having a business, so that is when you need to weed out that negativity and tell people you are going to make it. It may take awhile. You are not going to be a $100,000 company in a day. It is going to take years and years to build your experience before you get to where you want to be.”
“Many business owners say they are never where they want to be. They are always learning and growing to build their business.”
The theme of this year’s campaign is Passion to Paycheck. The co-chairs of the campaign are Hays High DECA members Brooke Denning, Cassidy Prough and Madelyn Waddell.
DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe. There are 215,000 members worldwide.
Hays High DECA is active in the community by organizing and conducting the annual Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat Food Drive, supporting and raising funds for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Wichita, and conducting various public relations campaigns as well as various related marketing projects. Hays High DECA members also compete at a state and international level.
