By Sophia Do
It is that time of year again when Fountain Valley’s Virtual Enterprise (VE) takes its annual trip to San Diego for a tradeshow. They are excited and ready to blow the competition away on December 12. This year, the Fountain Valley companies represented are VE 2’s Gummi and VE 1’s Baron Brew.
Like all the years before, Baron Brew is a beginner coffee business that delivers caffeine and baked goods to students and staff around campus when needing a good pick-me-up. This year, VE 2 created their own business called Gummi which is a gum company that prioritizes plastic-free, eco-friendly and sustainable gum which lacks regular gum.
With the last tradeshow’s success in November, raising $40,000 in VE profit at the Fountain Valley Trade Show hosted on campus, members are confident in their abilities to compete with other schools.
“I am very excited about this field trip, we have put in a lot of effort to make it this far and hope to have a good time, make a lot of sales and win some awards,” junior Amy Nguyen, Gummi’s Chief of Fundraising and Human Resources, said.
They will be competing against 65 other schools coming from all over the United States. The categories for competition in which the students are presented and graded are four pagers, video commercial, radio commercial, banner ad, website, booth design and sales pitch. Both companies have been working immensely hard throughout the year to prepare for each category’s presentation.
“I am very proud of our team for everything we have accomplished. Last year’s tradeshow was very fun in VE 1 and I can’t wait to go again representing VE 2,” senior Athena Tran, Gummi’s Chief Operating Officer, said.
Their booth was carefully decorated and budgeted with the resources they had. It consists of a pastel color palette going for a “candy shop” theme to correlate with the brand.
“This is my first year in VE, and it was very cool seeing the booth come together so nicely. We spent so much time using things we already had and ordering new materials but it was worth it in the end,” Co-Director of Human Resources and junior Thu Luong said.
They will be staying in a Town and Country Resort for two nights. They arrive on December 11 and depart on December 13, completing their trip with a beach day to celebrate.
