Each year, students attending Broome-Tioga BOCES New Visions Business Academy create their own company to market products and raise money for local charities. In a culmination of this month's long project, which began in September, the students presented their company, its products, marketing plan, financial reports, and more to the community during a presentation at the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator the morning of January 9, 2025.
WP High School seniors Taryn Hitt and Samuel Nichols were part of the Finance team of their company, "ProTech," which was started with seed money generated by selling 100 five-dollar shares to investors. In addition to Taryn and Samuel, the company included students from Binghamton, Chenango Valley, Maine-Endwell, Newark Valley, Susquehanna Valley, Vestal, and Windsor. The students worked together in teams - Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Finance - to pick a company name, select a brand color, design a logo, create a tagline, and decide what products to assemble and sell.
Their products were a Car Kit, consisting of jumper cables, first-aid kit, plug-in fuses, mylar blanket, work gloves, safety vest, reusable rain poncho, electrical tape, and bungee cords, and a Shield Key bundle, which included flashlight, window breaker/seatbelt cutter, ID tag, emergency whistle and wristlet. For the Car Kits, the students even created an instructional manual to tell buyers how to use everything provided and provided a QR code that linked to an instructional video they produced demonstrating the proper use of jumper cables!
During the presentation, they talked about looking at fixed costs, variable costs, and supply pricing to set price point for their products. They learned about the break-even point, maintained a general ledger, and generated an income statement. Taryn, ProTech's Chief Financial Officer, along with Samuel and the third member of their team explained how they tracked assets and liabilities, kept and maintained a financial workbook, and advised the financial decisions of the company. They kept a lot of EXCEL spreadsheets and assumed banking responsibilities during the selling phase of company operations!
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The bottom line? ProTech's total sales equaled $8,200. This resulted from the sale of 100 Car Kits and 160 Shield Key units. After deducting costs, returning investments plus a $5 dividend to shareholders (a 100% return on investment), and calculating selling expenses (etc.), the company’s net income was $6,128. 41. That was donated to four charities agreed upon by the students:
Broome County Toys for Tots - $1,200
Broome County Humane Society - $1,200
Binghamton Rescue Mission - $1,200
CHOW - $1,000* worth of food (purchased by the NV Business students in person and delivered to CHOW)
*Additional food donations brought this over $1,000.