As part of the Junior Achievement Company Program they created Pictou County Pride packs, which include a T-shirt, magnet and homemade packaging.
The shirts have “Pictou County Pride” written around an outline of the county lines. Inside the county lines there is a slice of pizza to represent Pictou County pizza, a building with smoke stacks to represent industry within the county and the Ship Hector to showcase the county’s heritage.
Part of the 18-week program, the students had to build a service or product to sell and look after all aspects a business deals with on a regular basis. After the program they dissolve their business and pay their stakeholders back.
They are currently in their ninth week of the program and have sold approximately 40 packs, which has brought them close to breaking even.
“The first person we sold one to thought it was a really cool shirt and idea,” said Luke MacDonald, a student at Northumberland. “We didn’t know how many we would sell, but I think we’re doing okay right now.”
Cora Moriarty, their advisor, said the group is very proud of where they are from and wanted to portray that.
“They came up with the idea after thinking of the best way to show how proud they are of where they’re from,” she said. “After seeing the East Coast Lifestyle shirts and how well those are doing they felt a shirt was the best way to show that.”
Besides Saturday at Highland Square Mall, the group showcased the shirts at the Pictou Academy auction held recently, but don’t have any other plans at this time for setting up a booth to sell the shirts before their program wraps up. If anyone wants to buy a shirt they can contact the group by e-mailing [email protected] or visiting their Facebook page.
Zack Myers, a member of the team from Pictou Academy, said they have had a lot of positive feedback about their product and that they hadn’t realized how hard it is to run a business.
“It’s definitely a lot more difficult to do this than I thought it would be at first,” he said. “There are a lot of little things to worry about that you might not even think of at first. We’ve learned a lot about what it takes to run a business.”
Joining MacDonald for their program from Northumberland are Ben Morrissey and Nick Warren. Stephanie Robicheau joins Myers as the other student from Pictou Academy, while Timothy Klein, Colin MacIntosh and Caleb MacDonald are the North Nova students in the program. The team’s other advisor is Jennifer Rafuse.
On Twitter: @NGNewsChris
