Photo courtesy of Sarah McCance
by Zainab Khan and Rachel Nguyen, staff writers
FV’s Virtual Enterprise ROP class, taught by Sarah McCance, has begun work to create their own businesses.
McCance wanted her students to use their business techniques, along with real world skills, to start the businesses. After finalizing their options for the 2014 business marketplace, the students decided to commit to a hover board company.
McFly Hoverboards is a unique virtual company that is entirely created and directed by students.
“The objective of virtual enterprise is for the students to apply for realistic jobs, start their own company and learn the skills it takes to have a career after high school,” said McCance.
The Virtual Enterprise ROP allows students to get the experience of starting their own businesses, while getting a look at the job they could pursue suit in the future.
“In this ROP class in particular, the class operates a virtual company that is real in all aspects (i.e., managing financial statements, maintaining a website, advertising our products, making the product) except that our product is not real and we are not actually selling it,” said Tiffany Tieu (‘15), a student in the class.
McFly Hoverboards specifically is a virtual company that focuses on selling hoverboards and hoverboard apparel and accessories.
The leaders of the class also attended the OC Virtual Enterprise Leadership Training in October, which allowed students to interact with professionals in the field of business and marketing.
“This event helped us realize how much work goes into a company and how much more we had to do before our trade shows,” Tieu stated.
The class is working on preparing for their first trade show in December. At the trade show, their company will host a booth advertising their product and showing prototypes.
For the time being, the students will wrap up their business plan for the company and finish developing the hoverboards and apparel, with hopes to expand in the future.
“We are hopefully going to have more company bonding activities in the future so our company can work better as a team and develop our products more,” Tieu stated. “We hope to expand to have a skate park or even an US Open for Hoverboarding.”
