Pitch Night 2023
Year 9 Entrepreneurship students pitch their ideas.Eight teams of 3-5 students from the four Year 9 Entrepreneurship classes pitched their toy design ideas to the Hunter Products toy design team in what was a truly inspiring evening. The feedback from the boys, their parents and the design team from Hunter Products was incredibly positive and several toys are being looked at for further development.
The Challenge
Year 9 Entrepreneurship students have created a toy concept and presented it in an “Elevator Pitch” style presentation to the class. Students have further developed these ideas in small groups. The finalists presented their “Shark Tank” style presentation in the BHIVE last night to the design team from Hunter Products. The inaugural Hunter Products Pitch Night saw 8 teams of students pitch their toy concepts to Madeleine Hunter, Luke Hunter and Ross Evans from Hunter Products. On offer was the opportunity to work with Hunter Products to develop the prototypes with the chance to go to market. There was a trophy for the winning team plus $5,000 in prizemoney shared between the top 3 teams.
The Process
Each class visited Hunter Products where they were presented with the design brief and then they completed competitive analysis of the category they would like to develop. Then the students completed market research in the Junior School speaking to classes from Year 1 and Year 4. With initial ideas in mind each class completed SWOT analysis for existing product in the market and then began the prototyping phase. Each toy was created in 2D and 3D models and then started to develop a marketing strategy for the product. They had to consider how the product will be manufactured with costings so they could provide a budget. Each group then had to develop a creative 5 minute pitch with a pitch deck to show off their product. In class pitches were conducted with 2 teams per class making it through to the Final Pitch.
The 8 teams in the order they pitched were:
- Learn-Piano – a piano with colours, numbers and letters to help young kids to engage with numeracy and literacy through music.
- Brail Footy Cards – designed to connect vision impaired people with the collectible card industry
- Glow Cricket – Glow in the dark reflective strips to enable backyard cricketers to continue playing as the light fades.
- Sports Fusion Stars – A range of sporting icons with accessories for collecting, trading and interchanging.
- Custom Cruizers – an improvement in toy cars allowing kids to swap out components to create their own unique vehicle design
- Magic Moments – sport star figurines linked to a magic moment in sport with audio commentary from the actual event
- Build a Buddy – Customisable soft toys with a range of limbs bodies and facial expressions to allow kids to better understand and express a range of emotions
- Monster Morphers – Transformable monster toys with interchangeable heads, arms and legs so kids can create crazy monsters to play with in the monster lab building
1st Place: Magic Moments – sport star figurines linked to a magic moment in sport with audio commentary from the actual event.
2nd Place: Learn-Piano – a piano with colours, numbers and letters to help young kids to engage with numeracy and literacy through music.
Equal 3rd: Glow Cricket – Glow in the dark reflective strips to enable backyard cricketers to continue playing as the light fades.
Equal 3rd: Monster Morphers – Transformable monster toys with interchangeable heads, arms and legs so kids can create crazy monsters to play with in the monster lab building
A huge thank you goes to Hunter Products for their amazing support of Entrepreneurship at Brighton Grammar School. With their support, mentorship and willingness to work with students has enabled us to embed an authentic real world unit in the Year 9 program that has enabled our students to work on designing a prototype that has potential to go to market. This opportunity has been a key factor in the quality and depth of designs on display last night.
