Forty-eight students from four area schools competed for scholarships Wednesday in a Business Challenge hosted by Junior Achievement of the Wolf River District at Shawano City Hall.
The Bonduel High School team of Austin Siolka, Isaiah Griesbach and Caleb Basten came out on top, and each student received a $500 scholarship.
“It feels pretty good,” Basten said. “I wasn’t expecting to win.”
Three Shawano Community High School students — Cole Huntington, Dalton Parson and Cole Rueter — received free tuition, valued at $500, at a business entrepreneur camp to be held in June for finishing second.
Students from Gresham Community School and College of Menominee Nation also participated.
The 16 teams utilized JA Titan, an online business simulator.
“It is global business competition program for high school students,” Schwartz said.
JA Titan creates a world, set in the year 2035, in which players are CEOs of their own companies. During game play, students must run a manufacturing company and master six key business decisions: price of product, production levels, marketing expenses, research and development costs, capital investment level, and charitable giving.
The success of each team is measured by a performance index, an evaluation of each fictional company based on retained earnings (50 percent), supply and demand potential (20 percent), productivity (10 percent), market share (10 percent) and growth (10 percent). The team with the highest company performance index wins.
Basten said he and his teammates focused a lot on setting the best price for their product.
“Our big job was making sure our prices matched with what was right,” Basten said.
Students were given a mentor from the local business community to help them through the process.
Adam Gafner, of Associated Investment Servies Inc., of Shawano, mentored the winning team. Eddie Sheppard, assistant city administrator and public works coordinator for the city of Shawano, mentored the second-place team.
Samuel Sykes, assistant manager of Walmart in Shawano, mentored three Bonduel students: Joey Lazzara, James Watry and Dylan Mueller.
Sykes said he was impressed with the students’ business decisions.
“The interesting thing was getting all three students together and engaged on a common goal,” he said. “They dealt a lot with the profits and dealt with the market share and how they can tie it together.”
The team also contributed some of its profits to charities.
“They were giving a percentage of their profits as charitable contributions to charities, and I let them know how important that was to any business and any company,” he said.
Sykes said he was happy to be selected as a mentor by the local JA board of directors.
“It is a great opportunity and I am honored that I was chosen,” he said. “It brings back memories of when you had a mentor in your life, and how you can share that learning experience with other kids.”
The entrepreneur camp that the three Shawano students will attend will be a first for the Wolf River District, which includes Shawano and Menominee counties and reaches 2,870 students in 149 classrooms.
“It is for college scholarships and camp scholarships,” district director Sue Schwartz said. “It has never been done before. It’s a pilot this year, so this is the first time we are giving this away.”
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