Pupils have grand designs on bag tags

St Francis Xavier Catholic School students lined up to purchase "TagYaBag" products designed by their fellow school mates from Room 19. Photo / Michael Cunningham

They have created a business, designed a product and sold it to raise money for the SPCA - and they're still in primary school.

The students of Room 19 at Whangarei's St Francis Xavier Catholic School have turned their classroom into a business complete with marketing, finance, production, design and sales departments, and have raised more than $1000 for SPCA Whangarei.

But if you walk into this company, called 27 Innovators to reflect the 27 students in the class, you won't see men and women in suits, you will see boys and girls dressed in animal onesies.

Parent Joanne Ashby said that each term the school had a different concept and this term it was innovation.

"We talked about bringing entrepreneurship into the classroom and part of that meant they had to solve a particular problem. We wanted the money to go to charity and we decided on the SPCA," she said.

The students, with help from their teacher Rose Welsh and Ms Ashby, had to create a cheap, non-perishable product to solve a common problem at the school: kids forgetting what items to bring to school.

Room 19 came up with the idea of bag tags called "TagYaBag". The product can be clipped on to a school bag. One side has a design and the other has a timetable so parents and students know the subjects for each day.

Hanna Campi, 10, said the project highlighted the talents of all the students.

"The kids that may not be good at some things were good at other things. Some were good at marketing, some were good at production and some were good at finance," she said.

A total of 240 bag tags were created and 15 designs were available; each one hand-drawn by the students. A promotion day and two sale days were held and all the products, priced at $4 each, sold out.

Ms Ashby said $1022 was raised for the SPCA with some of that coming from donations.