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Waconia High School
Reprinted with permission from the Waconia Patriot
By Al Lohman
Minnesota business leaders say that encouraging entrepreneurship will guarantee future success and help grow the state’s economy for decades to come. Meanwhile, business statistics indicate that one in four individuals is planning to start their own business.
To build that entrepreneurial knowledge and spirt, School District 110 offers two classes to Waconia High School students.
One is brand new and involves a partnership with local businesses. The other has been around for more than 30 years and involves students launching their own startup business. Here’s a look inside each classroom.
Custom-made classroom
In Dave Aeling’s entrepreneur class, students come together at the beginning of the term to form their own business. They issue stock, select, produce, market, sell and deliver their own line of products, and provide the necessary business support functions to make that happen.
This term’s class startup is called Waconia Customs, producing a line of seven items that can be branded or personalized with graphics. The products include: cutting boards, chopper mittens, coasters, Minnesota cutouts, fishing spears, name boards and coffee tables. The class selected their line from a collection of 30 potential items. Students say they limited their offerings because they wanted to be sure they could fulfill and deliver on orders.
Each student is expected to sell or take orders for products and each is expected help produce the products. Students also are assigned to other support functions, such as finance, human resources, sales and marketing. They even select department heads and officers.
Hunter Swanson is Waconia Customs’ president. Swanson says he thinks he was selected because he’s a senior and has taken a lot of industrial tech classes. He calls himself a hands-on manager and is usually out on the shop floor making sure everyone is assigned to tasks and that production is flowing efficiently.
All students are Waconia Customs’ employees and business owners. They buy into the business by purchasing stock. Shares sell for $10 each and help purchase supplies and pay for other expenses. The class even pays rent to the school district for use of the high school wood and metal shops, and all transactions are reconciled through the district finance office.
“We try to make this as much like a real-life business as possible,” Aeling said. Except the class doesn’t have to deal with taxes.
It does, however, have to deal with other real business issues – like a supplier concern that surfaced earlier in the month when the class learned that its chopper mitten supplier had been bought out.
That put supply chain lead Nick Sazdoff on the phone with the Shakopee, Minn., supplier to ensure that Waconia Customs would have an adequate supply of mittens, its most popular item.
In the back of the classroom, student financial analysts Dustin Gray and Matthew Humphrey are looking at a computer spreadsheet that shows sales transactions and expenditures. Waconia Customs’ stock price took a dip a week earlier because the class had to make a large payment for mittens. But sales are strong – students estimate they are selling about 130 items a week – and the stock had rebounded to around $12 a share as of last week.
Students are very interested in that because they actually get to share in earnings at the end of the term.
That also makes the class very popular, notes student Parker Althaus “Plus, there’s no homework and we have a lot of freedom in what goes on in class and involvement in the business.”
“In what other class can you actually make money?” asks Paige Madden. She provides human resource support and deals with issues like safety, worker performance policies and incentives.
Yes, students can earn incentives for sales and performance – and they can work overtime after school for actual cash. Three bucks an hour.
Aeling has been running the class for three decades and during that time the highest return on investment a class has earned was 300 percent. And the most any student made through stock and incentives was $1,600.
“This class holds a lot of promise,” Aeling said. “They might even have a shot at surpassing those numbers.”
Learning THE BIZ FROM PROS
In Lee Moen’s “start your own business” class, students work in groups with local businesses and organizations. They learn in detail about the business, research an issue or challenge, and come up with a business or marketing plan.
The seven business partners cross the spectrum from retail, to services, to entertainment, to hospitality, to non-profits, notes Christine Fenner, business relationship consultant for Waconia schools. Partners are: Everson’s Hardware, Mackenthun’s Fine Foods, Waconia Food Shelf, the high school Performing Arts Center, Safari Island, The Stash and Vandy’s Grille.
“The class really does provide an authentic business experience,” Moen said. “Students get some great instruction from our guest business speakers and great interaction in real-life business situations.”
Students interview business leaders and get a close look at their operation or organization. As students tackle a business issue, they often survey customers or clientele. Students then bring back a plan which they present to their own business client near the end of the term.
Student Anna Olson is employed at The Stash and is working on a project to try to attract younger shoppers to the local women’s clothing store. That involved surveying potential shoppers, also a trip to the Mall of America to check out some new brands and fashions to try out in the store.
Abby Kohner is working on project with the Waconia Food Shelf to build more awareness of its healthy meals program in the community. She calls the class very relevant because she might want to start her own veterinary practice someday.
Sam Oas comes from a family of entrepreneurs. His brothers run an electronics business that sells products to places like Target, and he might want to start his own business too.
“The thing that has struck me about this class is that business is often less about analytics and more social,” he said. “It’s about building relationships, talking to people, knowing your customers and knowing the community.”
During class, students hear from business leaders on a variety of topics such as leadership, marketing and other business acumen.
“I value the true passion to connect youth to entrepreneurship and to their community by creating learning opportunities with hands-on experiences and with real business challenges,” said Juan Llerena, one of the speakers from Mackenthun’s Fine Foods.
“I’m proud of the five young men working on our project,” said Deb Everson, marketing director for Everson’s Hardware. “They are in the process of gathering their survey results and will be putting together a plan for our store from there. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.”
“We are very excited for this group of young entrepreneurs. The group assigned to our business is working to find out what the best hot bar food and grab-and- go offerings are for our upcoming remodel,” adds Jessa Theis, Mackenthun’s partner owner. “By the time their project is complete they will have researched, analyzed, and presented the findings. This real-life experience gives them a taste of what it takes to make business decisions. Our community is very lucky to have forward- thinking schools that offer entrepreneurship in their curriculum. This is a win-win all the way around for students, the community and local businesses.”
As a kind of final exam, during the last two weeks of the class, students will present their plan proposals to their business partner. And Feb. 27 is a “community showcase” where the class and business partners will share their perspectives.