Last semester, August 2021 to December 2021, I was in an Entrepreneur class called E-Commerce. The class focused on starting a business and selling a product in-person and online. I was on a team of four people, and we created Geodesy Bracelets, personalized, hand-stamped bracelets to help you remember your favorite place or phrase.
At the beginning of the class, every student pitched an idea and the class would choose their top five favorite ideas and form teams based on those ideas. As my team formed, we had an idea for the bracelets and assumed that it would be easy to make and good for people to buy. We wanted to have a metal oval with coordinates or words stamped on it, with multicolored cords to wrap around the wrist. We ordered all the needed materials and made the prototype, only to see that we did not like anything about it. We kept asking ourselves, “Who is going to buy this bracelet? There’s no way they’re going to want to spend more than $3 on this.” We faced a problem of having the prototype look and feel of low-quality. We could not figure out how else we could stamp coordinates or words and almost came up with an entirely different business idea. We all had to decide if we wanted to do a new business idea or pivot from our original idea. We decided to stick with our original idea, and we pivoted a lot from it, which only made our products better quality and more popular to customers. As we made our products, we created a website and social media accounts to allow customers to shop all of the products, read customers’ stories, and stay updated about sales. At the end of the semester, my group donated all of our profits to a Christian summer camp, Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which allows young athletes to live in community with each other and grow in their faith. We had personal connections to Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which made us work harder to help get more donations!
My experience with Geodesy Bracelets has been awesome, and I loved the class. The class allowed me to run a business in a short time and see the behind the scenes of it. I learned a lot about working with a team and discovering different ways to pivot when faced with a challenge. Starting a business is very time consuming and at times, it feels like it is not worth it. However, this class showed me that running a business is worth all the time and effort. Why? It is because you hear customer’s stories of why they purchased from your business or what their customized order meant to them.
When looking at different classes to take at Grove City College, whatever major you are, this class gives you a real-world experience of running your own business. It has been one of my favorite classes that I have taken.
