Some characteristics are common to all good businesses, as participants in this year's Student Enterprise Awards found.

TO BE SUCCESSFUL in business you need a variety of skills. With any entrepreneur, number crunching (which is what anyone who is not business-minded thinks it's all about) comes second to attributes such as determination, creativity, organisational skills and the ability to communicate.

This year's Student Enterprise Awards (SEA) has generated a variety of excellent business models that will no doubt become more than just transition year projects in years to come. As different as each one is, however, there are characteristics common to all. Every businessperson will tell you the same thing. "You need a unique product that people want." Sounds easy? Well, sometimes the simplest thing can be staring you in the face but you will not always see it.

When starting off, it's usually a good idea to see what is needed within your own locality. This can be done through market research or just by word of mouth. In the case of Animation TY Creation, a business set up by two students from Loreto Community School in Milford, Co Donegal, students decided to focus on an issue that is particularly relevant to their county.

"It is an animated DVD which promotes seat-belt safety amongst young children," explains Anna Byrne (17). "We're aiming it at junior and senior infants," she says. "It's a Wallace and Gromit-style cartoon. The story is about some very young kids on a bus. The kids are messing about with their teddies and the next thing, a wee dog runs across the road. The bus has to stop and a teddy, which is not wearing his seat belt, falls down and his head comes off. We showed it in the local national school and they really liked it. But it also really shocked the kids when the teddy's head came off. So the message seemed to be getting across."

Road safety is a huge issue in Donegal where most, if not all, secondary school students will have attended road safety workshops and classes at school. Younger students, however, have not been targeted in this way before. The judges in Donegal's recent SEA regional finals acknowledged this and awarded Animation TY Creation first prize in the senior category and a place in the national finals in May.

"We set up our stand at the regionals to look like the bus from the animation, with headlights and seat belts," says 15-year-old Brenda McDaid. "And on the stall we showed where we got our info, how we did our market research and had the DVD showing the animation."

THE WIN HAS given the students the confidence they needed to go out and sell their product around the county. "There is a huge amount of interest from teachers, parents and Montessori schools in Donegal so far," says Byrne. "We were planning to just sell it off to the Donegal Childcare Committee but we've been advised to copyright it and sell it for €10 per DVD ourselves. That way we can make more money." The spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in Donegal.

In the capital, students at Loreto High School Beaufort in Rathfarnham have been using their own teachers to make a few bob. The executive board of The Cool Calendar Company somehow managed to convince a number of the teaching staff in Beaufort High School to pose in various costumes for a calendar. "We made a calendar with 12 pictures of the teachers dressed up in different costumes, says student Dervilla Byrne.

"In January we have a new-year scene where they are holding champagne glasses. In March one teacher is dressed up as St Patrick, and so on. We printed 300 copies and sold 290. They were sold to teachers and students and 50 per cent of the profits went to St Vincent de Paul."

It is rare indeed to find so many teachers willing to participate in such a project. Business studies teacher Francis Carolan had no problems taking part. "I'm in two of the months!" he brags. "In February there are three teachers, two males and one female. We are giving her hearts for Valentine's Day, as there was a rumour we were both after her years ago. But it's not true."

The calendar in its original form was a compromise. "Originally we wanted to do one with pictures of the teachers when they were children," says Byrne. "But they weren't willing to do that. They all came up with lots of different excuses. So this was a compromise, even though in one picture three of the male teachers are in drag."

LORETO BEAUFORT WON the senior category in the south Dublin SEAs and are also going to be taking part in the national finals in Tullamore, Co Offaly, next month. Again, the appeal of their product, as far as the judges were concerned, lay in its originality and its local commercial value. So how did they go about creating it? "It started with a brainstorming session in class," says Fiona Byrne (16). "Then, once we knew what we wanted to do we borrowed costumes from everywhere. We got a good photographer friend to take the photos and organised some financing for the raw materials. We made €1,800 in profit and we gave €725 to St Vincent de Paul."

Cool for cats as copying opens up a novel market

THE STUDENT ENTERPRISE Awards aren't just about winning and losing. All across the country mini-entrepreneurs are coming up with excellent business ideas that might not make it into the finals but are still generating plenty of business in their own area.

TY students in St Patrick's Classical School Navan have come up with a novel enterprise. Their company, Copycats, transfers home video cassettes to DVD format. While less important to those of us already used to digital televisions and mp3 players, plenty of people's cherished home movies of weddings, birthdays and other such memories are on formats that are no longer user friendly.

"We came up with the idea in class last September," explains 16-year-old Andrew Gavin, managing director of Copycats. "Many of our parents had loads of old VHS cassettes of home recordings they had made over the years. But very few people have VHS players any more. Nowadays everyone is using DVD. For our enterprise project, our teacher Padraig Doherty had suggested we identify a product we needed ourselves or something that a family member needs. So this seemed perfect. "We found the necessary equipment to do the transfers and are able to do the job at an affordable price - €10 per transfer," says Andrew.

The company has very few overheads apart from the cost of the DVD, its case and a label, all of which comes to 90 cents. So there is plenty of money to be made. In fact, the business has become so widely known in the area they have had to employ the services of international courier DHL to help them with their deliveries.

"We were getting so many orders from outside the Navan area that we had to get DHL involved," explains sales manager Sean McFadden, the public face of Copycats. "The advertising really paid off. We put up notices in local shops, in the church bulletin and gave flyers out to all the classes in school. People from the general area just drop in their old videocassettes to us at school but we needed a delivery service for customers further away. So far we've made over €2,000."