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The official newsletter of TREP$,the award-winning entrepreneurship educational program February 2017
Friends,Now is the time for Entrepreneurship. STEM is great... But according to Toi Hershman, it'seven better with the addition of an entrepreneurialcomponent. In her article "Entrepreneurship andSTEM Education," Hershman writes,"Entrepreneurship education levels the playing field. Meaning, even if a student is not interested in adirect STEM field, he or she can be an entrepreneurand possess entrepreneurial mindsets and skillsthat will benefit him/her in ANY field andoccupation." Read more below.
TWITTER IS LONELY without you. Let's have somefun together! Official hashtags: #TREPSatSchool,#TREPSMarketplace #TREPS and mention@trepsedu
National Entrepreneurship Week is one weekaway! February 18th-25th. With our quick and easybulletin board, you can celebrate in style! Click thelink to request yours today! Just print, cut, andstaple it up! Request the plans.
Join us at a TREP$ Marketplace foran awesome shopping
experience! Click here to visit the website calendar. Click here to see events on the facebookpage.
TREP$ T-shirtsOrder 25 or more for discounted pricing at
$12 per shirt (Y-Med to Adult XL) Be sure to allow 2 weeks for printing!
Individual T-shirts are $18 each. License the TREP$ logo to print your own
personalized school TREP$ T-
Take advantage of this awesome video! Share this link with every parent of a TREP$ kid.It answers the questions most parents have.
Tips for TREP$ Parents
Spotlight TREP$! We have some great studentwrite-ups to share with you- written by and about young entrepreneurs we met this fall. Meet Emily,Maggie, and Izzy from Eisenhower Middle School inWyckoff, NJ, Kyra from Walter T Bergen inBloomingdale, NJ and Remy and Riley from WhiteRock School in Jefferson, NJ, Their stories areprinted below.
The Press featured Maple Road TREP$ in WestMilford this month. See article below. As always, thank you for being a part of thisimportant and extraordinarily fun mission. Pamela deWaal and Hayley Romano
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shirts.Contact us to discuss the licensingoption.
DID YOU KNOW? Schools can place orders online even ifthey use purchase orders or plan to pay
with a check. Shop at trepsed.com. Orders can also be made by emailing
Make a plan to celebrate NJ Makers Dayby on Friday, March 24, 2017! Visithttp://njmakersday.org/ to learn more.
www.trepsed.com
Entrepreneurship and STEM Education by Toi Hershman
an excerpt from the article: It is wonderful to provide some of these STEM skills and opportunities to students, but weneed an end-game if we want our students and the world to capitalize on these efforts. Therefore, I present to you, for your review, a new acronym. Get ready, drumroll please...
E-STEM! Yes, another letter. The new 'E' stands for Entrepreneurship and is IS the end-game. Why not Entrepreneurship as the vehicle for STEM education? Is it not theoverarching goal? Once you determine you are a creative, insightful, problem-solvingleader, how do you let the world know about it? Entrepreneurship. BOOM!
The Entrepreneurship mindset incorporates many of the things STEM education aims toteach. But without a global understanding, without perseverance, without knowledge ofmarkets and audiences, much creativity and genius could be lost. Entrepreneurship is theunderpinning of all STEM education and can be seamlessly incorporated to produce awell-rounded student ready to tackle the challenges of the real world.
Read the full article.
Maple Road TREP$ in the NEWS!
Maple Road TREP$ is a holiday hit Published Jan 17, 2017 at 6:58 am (Updated Jan 13, 2017)
WEST MILFORD - Maple Road held its 9th TREP$ Marketplace, showcasing its 5th and6th grade entrepreneurs. The selection of products was vast and the creativity from thekids was enviable.
Maple Road joined the TREP$ family of schools in September of 2008. This year'sMarketplace had well-prepared young entrepreneurs, a great mix of products, some veryproud parents and a nice crowd of community members. View the article
Learn More About TREP$This 5 minute informative video is just perfect to share with colleagues, friends and familywho would like to learn more about the program.
What is TREP$ All About?
Students Are Encouraged to Submit Stories!We are always looking for students to tell their unique stories to our readers.
To see your students' businesses in the Spotlight 'treps" section of the TREP$ on Track,have them submit write-ups about their experiences. With their submissions, they shouldinclude a photo of them making their product, posing with their product, or standing at theirtable. Most write-ups are 250-500 words. Email submissions to [email protected].
Meet Emily, Maggie, and Izzy of "MIE Wine Cork Decor"Eisenhower Middle School, Wyckoff, NJ
Our names are Emily, Maggie, and Izzy and we are in 7thgrade. We loved doing TREP$ and we would definitely do itnext year. At first, we didn't know what product we were goingto make, and we had a few ideas. Then, our science teacher,one of the TREP$ advisors suggested that we make wine corkletters and other things, and the idea stuck. When we lookedonline and saw how many ideas we could create out of winecorks, we instantly loved the idea.
Since there were so many things we could make, it was hardto choose. After looking at all of the designs, we decided tomake 3 things; Christmas tree ornaments, initials, and pictureframes. All of these were great sellers, and we are very happywe made them. We made about 25 Christmas tree ornaments,10 picture frames and 6 initials, but we also have customorders if someone didn't see what they wanted. We thought ofthis idea because it was another great way to bring inbusiness.
One of the most common questions we got while selling was, "Where did you get the wine corks?" Theproducts were simple to make, but they did take up a lot of corks. We collected some from our families,our friends and we also had to order some online. People seemed to love the Christmas tree ornamentsmore than we thought. We spent about $5 to make the letters, $0.80 cents per frame, and about $0.10cents or less to make the ornaments. (But they really didn't take any money.)
We packaged the ornaments and frames and taped our business cards to the letters. When we got tothe marketplace, we were amazed at the amount of people that were there. We were even more stunnedwhen we sold out of our ornaments and frames. We had an amazing experience with TREP$ and wecan't wait to join TREP$ next year and have more great times.
Meet Kyra of "WTB Best Sellers"Walter T Bergen School, Bloomingdale NJ To be in TREP$ 2016 was a both stressful and exciting experience. It was my first (and last :( ) yearand I had a lot of fun. My product was a book I wrote and illustrated myself--- so you could imagine howmuch fear I felt the night of the Marketplace. I've never really made my work public and that had mademe even more nervous. I worked so hard on my product; just as every other kid had done. At first, I soldmy product for five dollars, and surprisingly, a few people were willing to pay for my book at that time.They said it was interesting, something new that they hadn't seen. Soon, I lowered my price to threedollars. Eventually, people who had stopped by my stand before, told others about my product andthose people bought my product. Later, I walked around the marketplace, buying other TREP$'products, and in exchange they would buy my product.
By 8:00, I managed to sell out completely. I think you could imagine my happiness at that point. In fact Iwas so happy, I was practically buzzing. I couldn't be any happier. I was so proud and my mom anddad were even more proud. And even though it's been a week, my mind is still blown over how I soldout. Trust me, it's a true achievement and that feeling when you sell the last of your product is the mostwonderful feeling in the world. I tried hard. And sure enough, and thank God it payed off in the end.
Meet Remy and Riley of "R & R Spa Products"White Rock School, Jefferson, NJ "Hi! Would you like to buy some sugar scrub or lip balms? They make the perfect holiday gift orstocking stuffer!" This is Remy & Riley. We are the founders of R & R Spa Products. And that was ofour sales pitch at the TREP$ Marketplace. We decided to do TREP$ because we wanted to learn howto run a business. We were inspired to make spa products by our favorite store, Lush. In thebeginning, our primary focus was bath bombs, sugar scrubs, and lip balms.
Our first challenge was deciding what to name ourcompany and to come up with a creative slogan. Wedecided to name our company R&R Spa Products becauseboth our names start with an R (Remy & Riley) and also,because it was a play on the concept of rest andrelaxation. R&R -- get it? We brainstormed a lot of ideasfor clever slogans. Things like "You glow girl" and "Onehappy girl in the tub." It was a hard choice, but we finallysettled on "We Put The Ah In Spa."
Our next step was to prototype our products. It's a goodthing we did! When we tried making bath bombs it didn'tgo so well; they were really hard and they were also veryexpensive to make. We scrapped that idea. We also had a fail with the lip balms - the recipe calledfor too much beeswax and the product was so sticky, we knew we couldn't sell it. We tried otherrecipes until we got some that worked. Another mistake we made was using regular food dye in oursugar scrubs; we found out that wasn't a good idea when it stained our hands! We adjusted our recipesto use soap dye instead. After all who wants blue hands? All of these "failures" helped us to refine theproducts that we took to market.
Our decisions around packaging, color selection, scents and product names were designed to help ussell our products. We knew the marketplace would be just before Christmas and we felt our productwould make great holiday gifts. We wanted to make our products look and sound appealing to ourcustomers. With those things in mind we came up with scents like Minty Christmas, Candy Cane,Cinnamon Roll, Cranberry Orange, and Almond Snowflake. With every decision we asked ourselves"Do we like this?" "Will other people like this?" and, most importantly, "Will our customers buy this?"
We had a little help from our parents when it came to marketing our products. Remy's dad works ingraphic design and helped us create a great flyer. Riley's mom is very active on social media andposted the flyer on line. As a result, we sold some of our products even before the marketplace and alot of family and friends came to buy from our business!
One week before the marketplace, we finalized the packaging for our products and did a trial run. Weset up a table and practiced what we were going to say. We used a holiday-colored table cloth andChristmas lights to make our booth attractive. We also stacked up our sugar scrubs and put them atdifferent heights and angles. We put our lip balms in a glass bowl so our customers could see all ofthem and choose the ones they wanted. They looked very pretty!
Our experience at the marketplace wasreally great. It was hot and crowded, butit was also very exciting. People werereally interested in our products andasked us a lot of questions about how wemade them. We enjoyed answering theirquestions and felt really proud of the workwe had done.
We learned so much from participating inTREP$. For example, we learned abouthow to select a product and how to priceand market the product, and also abouthow much work it is to start a businessfrom scratch. The most fun part of theexperience was making the productsand getting crazy in the kitchen. Ourcompany is a great place to work! If wehad the chance to do it again we definitely would. We had fun, learned a lot, and made some money inthe process!
