A TEAM of BCoT students won the award for ‘Best Presentation’ at a Young Enterprise event held at the AA headquarters in Basingstoke.

Team Apex, who make scented candles from sustainable products, took home the prize for Best Presentation and fought off stiff competition from seven other Young Enterprise (YE) companies, including Outside the Box from BCoT.

During the evening, the young entrepreneurs were given the opportunity to display their trade stands and speak to three judges about their YE journeys.

They were asked questions about product development, finances, sales, marketing and teamwork.

They also had to discuss their successes as well as their failures, and how they overcame hurdles and setbacks.

The final and most nerve-racking task of the night was to present a four-minute pitch to the judges in a Dragons’ Den-style challenge.

There were several awards handed out on the night, including Best e-advert, Best Product, Best Company Report and Finances, Best Trade Stand, Best Presentation, and Overall Winners.

“The students worked really hard to prepare for this event and worked brilliantly amongst their teams,” said Sarah Price, business and enterprise lecturer at BCoT.

“They developed excellent trade stands and redesigned ones that have been used in past events to try and wow the judges with their creativity and design.”

Sarah added that everyone in the BCoT teams had a role to play in preparing for the event and rose to the challenge.

Outside The Box suffered many problems, including losing their team leader to ill-health. However, at short notice two team members stepped up to give the final presentation which went extremely well.

Sarah said: “Young Enterprise has given students invaluable experience to see how businesses and companies work in industry, as well as allowing them to develop their course knowledge and key life skills.

“They have also learned that not everything in business goes to plan and that in order to succeed, you must work with your colleagues to fight against adversity. Both companies did this and I am very proud of them both.”