TRICKY BUSINESS 2

PROGRAMME 1: CYCLEPODS

ACTIVITIES

Guidance

These activities support a mix of individual, paired and group work.

Before viewing

Bike thefts in the UK have doubled since the mid-1990s and are still going up. Discuss your experiences of bike theft and explain why bikes are easy to steal. Come up with ideas for a new product to reduce the number of bikes being stolen. Explain whether you would invest your money in a company that made this product.

If a shopkeeper buys an item for £10 and sells it for £20 how much profit does he or she make? What is this profit as a percentage of the original price? Is it a fair profit? How would dropping the price to £10 or £15 affect the shopkeeper's ability to pay bills and wages? What price would you advise the shopkeeper to charge and why?

Imagine that you have a brilliant business idea. How would you raise the cash to get you started?

You have 12,500 recycled cans. What could you make with them?

Give examples of prestigious awards (e.g. for music, TV programmes, products and services). How does getting an award like this affect the recipient, particularly a business? If you owned a business, how keen would you be to win such an award?

After viewing

To view 4Learning video clips you will need Windows XP/2000 and Windows Media Player 9, 10 or 11. Unfortunately, the clips are not supported on Macintosh computers.

The video clips may contain a few seconds of extra material at the beginning and end. We have therefore included opening and closing descriptions to help identify the intended scene.

Good news, bad news
Clip one: 03:17 – 04:00

• Opens with the narrator saying, 'The good news is, in the last nine months, they've sold eight Cyclepods to big companies like Pepsi and Reebok.'
• Closes with the narrator saying, 'This means James and Natalie are digging deeper into their funds and now they're about to run out completely.'

Imagine that you are James. Use the information in this clip to produce two press releases, one for a financial website and one for the Cyclepods website. The press releases should give people a picture of the current state of your business. Share your results, explaining and justifying any differences between the two releases.

Discuss why entrepreneurs need to keep up-to-date with what their competitors are doing and what is happening in the wider business world. Suggest how and where they could get this information. Select, investigate and evaluate one information source. Share your findings.

Selling yourself
Clip two: 07:01 – 07:37

• Opens with the narrator saying, 'James has a daunting task ahead but, in business, he needs to speculate to accumulate.'
• Closes with James saying, 'So I'll have to, er, maybe get the heavies in.'

Describe the problems that James mentions in this clip. What advice would you give him on overcoming them? (Think about how he can build his self-confidence and improve his negotiation skills.) Demonstrate or display your ideas.

Business plans
Clip three: 07:46 – 08:55

• Opens with the narrator saying, 'Cyclepods can't do anything without an updated business plan.'
• Closes with the narrator saying, 'Whilst it's all fun and games, James needs to get his act together.'

Explain why a current business plan is of fundamental importance for a business seeking investors. Discuss whether different types of business need different types of business plans. List the areas that you think James and Natalie should cover in their business plan. Check out your ideas using information from the internet, banks and other organisations. Did you omit anything important?

Presenting the business case
Clip four: 10:17 – 11:49

• Opens with James saying, 'Hi everyone. OK, I'm from Built from Scratch Designs Ltd, which is Cyclepods.'
• Closes with the narrator saying, 'If James wants that money he's going to have to get in there and start acting like a businessman, not a designer.'

James is trying to persuade people to invest in his business. Give him a score for how well he did in this clip. Chart the strengths and weaknesses in his performance and say what he could do to improve next time.

Manufacturing location
Clip five: 18:29 – 19:17

• Opens with the narrator saying, 'With confidence at an all time high, Natalie tackles their manufacturing problems head on.'
• Closes with the narrator saying, 'If he is happy with the set up, they're going to order in bulk, which will increase their profit margin from 26% to a fantastic 76%.'

Explain why Natalie and James decide to move their manufacturing base from India to China. Present your ideas as a set of scales, or a seesaw, with China in the highest position and India in the lowest one. Discuss the following questions:

• Should James and Natalie worry about how their decision to move will affect the Indian economy and the factory workers, or is it more important for them to keep their company going?
• Will the Chinese factory always be able to produce good quality Cyclepods cheaper and faster than factories in other countries?
• Should James and Natalie think about moving Cyclepod production to the UK?

Now draw a second set of scales or a seesaw showing what might happen to Chinese Cyclepod production in the future and why.