Entrepreneurship class earns third place at trade fair

Last month, students in Dansville’s Entrepreneurship Class taught by Sue Markowski, participated in the Virtual Enterprise Trade Fair at Genesee Community College in Batavia.

The sixth annual event, sponsored by Genesee Community College and Accelerated College Enrollment Program, challenged students to create businesses, and also build marketing plans for those businesses. During the trade fair, each participating school set up a business and students shopped using virtual dollars. Winners in the competition were determined by the virtual sales of the products they accrued during the event, as well as in other event categories.

Dansville’s Vision Vacations, came home with a third place for the highest dollar amount of sales made. Vision Vacations sells vacation packages to Bora Bora and Paris, as well as a North America ski trip, Vermont ski trip and a super cruise that concludes with a trip to the Super Bowl. There were approximately 30 schools that participated this year.

"The trade fair was an excellent experience! There was a lot of relying on everybody in our group to accomplish our overall task," said student Brittany Button. "It think this was a valuable skill because by working as a group we lessened the stress. Everybody did their job, and had a great time."

As part of their preparations, students participated in a professional development day, also hosted by GCC prior to the trade fair. They were able to meet with students from other school districts also involved in the event, and present an overview of Vision Vacations to them.

Students used both classroom and personal time to create the business, develop a plan, and create the booth for the fair. Organization, creativity, teamwork and commitment played an essential role in the students’ success for this event.

"This helped me realize there is a lot more to operating a business," said student Jordan VanDunk. "It takes a lot of work to get a product ready to sell and a lot of people are involved and working together. There are also a lot more obstacles that pop up along the way."

"This experience enlightened me on how much time and energy it takes to run and operate a business," added student Max Koch.

A special thank you to the Dansville PTO, Jeffrey and Theresa Marshall, James Sullivan, Dr. Geoffrey Markowski and Biddle Embroidery for their generosity and support of this event, which made it possible for the students to participate this year.