sell on Bob ShopIn March 2010 the students will sell on Bob Shop and put to test their entrepreneurial skills.

On Wednesday 10 March 2010 up to fifty students of the Investment Society at the University of Cape Town will get hands-on exposure to an online selling environment. They will try to sell a variety of items on the bobshop Crazy Wednesday auctions, which start from R1.

The fifty will first attend a Bob Shop selling seminar at the University of Cape Town campus. Then, armed with a cash loan, they will be taken to a shopping location and given two hours to source products for re-sale.

After the shopping spree, the students will put into practice what they learned during the Bob Shop selling seminar about the art of online selling. They will take digital images of all the items purchased, write descriptions, and upload everything in time for the opening of the Crazy Wednesday R1 auctions at noon on Tuesday 9 March.

Then follows the hardest part: the nail-biting suspense of monitoring your online auctions in real time. Are buyers visiting your listing? Are they clicking on the “bid now” button? Will your item sell at a good price? And which item will achieve the highest profit margin: the pink wig that your team decided to list, or the competing team’s lighter fashioned as old-time duelling pistol?

On 31 March the Bob Shop team will meet again with the fifty students of the Investment Society to declare the winning team.

The Bob Shop Crazy Auction Challenge is part of the 2010 My Business Entrepreneurship Development Project run by the Investment Society at the University of Cape Town.

As InvestSoc, MyBusiness Project Manager Chris Speller says, “MyBusiness program was created in October last year. The Investment Societies project offerings had a number of great programs, but none that specifically focussed on entrepreneurship. I thought our members could benefit from a program that not only gave them exposure to successful entrepreneurs, investors and venture capitalists, but also taught them practical skills they could use to try and transform their business dreams into realities. I also wanted the program to encompass challenges where students could test their newly found skills and start building up experience developing entrepreneurial projects. bobshop.co.za presented a great opportunity to develop this idea further. They proposed a seminar, showing students how it is possible for them to achieve on online presence for a business easily and affordably through the bobshop.co.za website. The Crazy Auction Challenge goes a step further in that it allows our members to put into practice the skills they take away from the seminar.”

“Essentially”, adds Chris Speller, “I wanted to give an opportunity and platform to students who may be brimming with great entrepreneurial ideas but perhaps are unsure of how to go about turning those ideas into a workable business. The Crazy Auction Challenge as well as the MyBusiness program in general present a great framework for students to leverage off  and hopefully gain the confidence and ambition to go on to start successful businesses.”

For the March 2010 challenge, Bob Shop has been able to secure a valuable prize for the InvestSoc student who makes the most profit: a laptop and one-year internet access. The prize will be donated by Skyrove, an innovative internet provider. Skyrove enables anyone to earn an income by creating their own internet hotspots and selling bandwidth to others at affordable prices.

“The feedback from the participants of the Auction Challenge will give valuable insight regarding how to design practical entrepreneurial projects that work best for tomorrow’s entrepreneurs – people who are ready to shape their own future, but need well-targeted help to kick-start their careers”, says Bob Shop managing Director Andy Higgins.

Read more in the Bob Shop Press Release Students in the Bob Shop Auction Challenge.

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