First Annual Oak Forest HS Entrepreneurship Trade Show

Oak Forest High School student Hadeel Hasan gets a taste of the real world as she promotes Hot Cheetos with the slogan “creates a firecracker explosion in your mouth” at the First Annual Entrepreneurship Trade Show offered by Oak Forest High School Entrepreneurship teacher Jim Matlon.

At the trade show, students learned real life skills, according to Matlon. He said, “I think students learned a lot about salesmanship, promotion and self-promotion.” Students had to “sell” their concept to the consumer (who was made up of teachers and visiting classes) who traveled around the room and then voted for the concept they liked the best. The consumer had to judge the promotions by their overall display effectiveness, salesmanship, organization, appearance, and confidence.

Hadeel Hasan felt the trade show assignment was challenging but “it was effective” in helping her learn the concepts of marketing for the consumer.

Students created various marketing concepts. One student was Samantha Colunga, who marketed Precious Moments Corsages and explained to consumers that girls want permanent corsages so they can remember the moment they were given to them by their dates.

Other students promoted activities they could do, such as Rachel Greenhill, who promoted the Rainbow loom. Greenhill’s display was very effective and she was extremely knowledgeable about the Rainbow loom. It was evident by the advanced Rainbow loom figures she made for the marketing display, as well as displaying the actual Rainbow loom so that consumers could test it out themselves.

Phillip Burns promoted Arizona Iced Tea. Before the project, he didn’t really know anything about iced tea. “I didn’t really know about iced tea and I got to learn about it. I took this class because I wanted to learn about entrepreneurship.”

Jackie Villareal marketed the Crossley record player. “I really feel that vinyl is going to make a huge comeback,” she said. She demonstrated how easy the record player was and the quality of sound that emitted from it. “I think the assignment was really cool. Seeing the creativity of my classmates was neat as well as seeing the products they picked.”

Jim Matlon said, “This trade show assignment will be a great segue to the business plan we will be working on in the next couple of weeks.”

The votes are in and five students have been named winners in the First Annual OFHS Entrepreneurship Trade show. Pictured (l to r): Rachel Greenhill - First Place; Samantha Colunga - Fifth Place; Tyreek Tyler - Second Place; Jackie Villareal - Fourth Place; and Jordyn Haynes - Third Place.