In this experience, i started a small business with my friend, we learnt how to make different types of accessories with the help of youtube, her mom and other tutorials that are available online. We started this small business on 1st July 2021 and we sold our products using online platforms. Through this process, we got nearly 80-90 orders and learnt new skills to be able to make jewellery like earrings, bracelets, necklaces, anklets, etc. We also customised products according to our client’s needs, which further helped us learn new techniques and developed our range of ideas regarding our products.

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.

We faced a lot of challenges during this experience. Since we were new to the field of business, we had to thoroughly brainstorm strategies and ideas to make our business more and more better and successful through this journey, we also had to look into managing finances and costs for each of the products to prevent our business from loss. For this, we made a spreadsheet to record our finances and orders. Also, we faced a lot of challenges when it came to competition, there were a lot of small businesses that sold jewellery like ours and since our target audiences were also somewhere on the same lines, we faced difficulties while selling our jewellery for which we worked hard towards finding a unique selling point that differentiates our products from other competitors. These challenges provided us with a new experience and helped us develop our skills in terms of management and product making skills as well.

LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.

We organised our business using a spreadsheet that took note of our orders, expenses, prices and products. I’m not usually so organised but for this, i learnt how to manage a spreadsheet to maintain organisation and keep myself and my partner updated on the ongoing activities in our small business. Both planning and initiating our business and strategies remain equally difficult since due to competition we had to have strong strategies in order for our business to grow, in the same way, initiating our business and it’s strategies required understanding the response of our audience in case of failure or success to further plan our activities. This experience will make planning and initiating comparatively easier since I was able to understand the basics and learnings from this experience. Planning and initiating experiences help sort the basics of them and help us understand what it will look like in the future and the work that will follow, the requirements for the same.

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.

Working with others in any scenario mainly depends upon the ideas and perspectives that the members that are working together share, that helps reduce arguments and disagreements especially when it comes to major decision making processes. Working collaboratively was one of the main components of this business since decision making had to involve both the partners, in our case, working together was convenient for both of us since our working patterns were different so we were able to cover all areas of work that were required, parts that i couldn’t do, my partner was able to fulfil and our opinions in most areas were on the same lines. However, in case of disagreements, we considered both opinions and cam to one conclusion depending on what’s best for our business.