Meet Alyssa and Sophie, owners of Creative Wood Creations, and students at Villano School, Emerson, NJ
TREP$ gave us a great experience at what running a business is like. When we decided that we were going to be partners, we wanted to do something that most people weren’t doing like stress balls and slime. We first wanted to do a phone holder out of duct tape, but we realized quickly that the idea was going to be tricky to make. We came up with other ideas, but we didn’t think that we would have enough time to make them.
We got together to talk about ideas and realized Sophie had a ton of wood available to be used. That’s when we decided to do wooden signs, and Creative Wood Creations was born. With the materials we had around our houses, there was a small amount of signs we would need to sell to reach our break even point. Since it was a multi-step process, we did most of our work at home. We both came up with different sayings to put on our signs which ended up working out very well.
By the day of the TREP$ Marketplace, we had made 90-100 boards and decided to take more orders for personalized signs or of popular signs if we sold out of them quickly. It felt really exciting and nerve wracking standing at our table during the Marketplace. At first, we didn’t know if we made too many signs or if there wasn’t enough of certain signs.
Once people started coming, our table quickly had many customers and we realized we were going to make a lot of money. At the end of the Marketplace, we only had a few signs leftover and about 25 orders to make. We realized we could keep our business going even after TREP$. If we had a chance to do this again, instead of making so many different kinds of signs, we would make more of the popular signs and still have the option to order personalized signs. Overall, TREP$ was probably the best in school activity we did this year.
