Ralph Hersey and Dave Hewlett - The IzzyG Company
Ralph and Dave volunteered to become ‘Business Advisors’ and helped mentoring the YE group of Islington Green School ‘achievers’ students who were setting up a company to print T-shirts. The students created the name IzzyG (short for Islington Green) developed the company logo, sourced the products, wrote the business plan and put together the marketing strategy to sell the shirts.
The group had to define the roles within the company, learned how to ‘work’ with each other and dealt with the problems of running a business. Initially they were overwhelmed by the paperwork. Their first major contract was to print the schools T-shirts. However Nike had donated a large quantity of them to the school so the budding business lost its first order. This was a daunting experience, however they soon recovered from the blow. The students had to quickly adapt to survive and changed their product range to bags and wallets and adjusted their marketing plan accordingly.
They recruited their customers among their friends, families and teachers and and they succeed in securing a stall at Camden Market for a full day of sales. Six of the IzzyG’s turned up on a very cold, wet and grey day and despite the weather's best attempt to dampen their mood, they managed to keep their enthusiasm high and sold bags and wallets.
