Paradise Knoll School, Oak Ridge, NJ  

 

My name is Evan and I am the maker and seller of "Copter Bots."  A "Copter Bot" is a paper robot that can fly and spin.  I made 5 different designs to test and fly before creating my final "Copter Bot" product.

I came up with the idea because there was a popular game called, Minecraft, who sold little origami squares designed to look like its characters. There was no way I was going to copy off the game, so I thought what could be made out of paper and be awesome?  Robots!  But something was missing, it should do something. Maybe it could drive?  I wondered how I was going to make that.  When I was thinking, a helicopter passed over our house.  That was it, a helicopter!

My dad had taught me how to make paper helicopters a while ago and this made building a template a little bit easier.  My dad made copies of our "Copter Bot" template for me.  Then I designed what it looked like by drawing on the template.  Since my dad works at Toys"R"Us headquarters making ads, he helped find a huge selection of robots on the computer.  I picked my favorite eyes, body, arms, and legs and drew my own "Copter Bot" look.  My dad scanned my final drawing on the template into the computer.  I picked which colors should go where and what colors we could use.  Then I wrote the directions.

Now was the hardest part, putting them together.  Luckily, it only took one day.  My dad cut them out with his X-Acto knife to make them look more professional, as I supervised.  I did the folding and my mom did the taping, almost like an assembly line.  Then it was time for the fun part, I tested each one to make sure they all spun right.  

 

Hello. My name is Tarrah. I am 13 years old and I am in 8th grade and Anthony Wayne Middle School. I have done TREP$ since I was in 5th grade. Every year I make something by hand to sell. The first two years I created clay figures. I used techniques that I learned in windows art. They took a long time to create and so I would start making them at least a month and a half ahead of time. The clay figures where popular and sold well. People kept buying them even after the TREP$ Marketplace was over.

Last year I tried something new. I created dog toys from recycled clothing, goo and pet rocks. I was busy so I didn't put as much effort into my items as I had done before. I found that people were not as interested in buying those things.

This year I decided to go back to making things but I didn't want to do clay stuff anymore. I looked on Pinterest for some ideas. I found some mini vials filled with beads, glitter and colored water. Each had a theme like "dreams" or "Over the rainbow" or "Ogre's Blood". They looked fun and easy to make. So I created a list of about 100 unique kinds. They were in categories like "magic", "Disney", and "zodiac signs".

At first, I thought the materials would be too expensive but my mom helped me find some bulk items on line. I had to buy mini vials with corks and eye hooks. We also found some affordable necklaces to include. I had to invest about $100. I was nervous that I wouldn't make my money back or that I wouldn't make much money. The vials were going to be a lot of work and I wanted to make a good profit.

The vials took a lot of work. I wanted each one to be unique with no duplicates. I used beads, glitter, charms, colored wire, and various other items. They were starting to look pretty good so I decided to wear one to school. People liked it and thought I had bought it at a store. So, I started wearing a new one each day to get people excited about my store. The favorite was "Melted Snow Man". That one had water with two black beads and a wire wrapped to look like a carrot nose.

When I set up my display I wanted shelves. We didn't have any at home so I created some with cardboard boxes. I taped them together, made sure they were different heights, and taped black table cloth over the tops. The display looked really cool and the black table cloth made the colors in the vials pop. I called my store "Tarrah's Magic Emporium"

My store was busy the whole time during the TREP$ market place with only a few breaks in between hordes of customers. I even had customers returning to by buy "just one more". I even had people ordering them. I was surprised because I set the price at $5 per vial and people said it was too high. However, I had seen vials sell on Easy for more than $5. I'm glad I kept to my price because I sold over 50 vials and I could have sold more if the market place had stayed open.

 

My name is Faisal and my brother's name is Hashem. We were very excited to join TREP$  club at my school but we didn't exactly know what our product would be for the TREP$ Marketplace. Then we found something on Youtube which was a very good idea and very easy to make! We wanted something fun - something new - something people would really want to buy.  We didn't want any expensive stuff.  We wanted marshmallow shooters that were  inexpensive, fun to play with, which we could earn profit from.  We found a design that was all of those things.

Our prices were 1 shooter $2 ,  2 shooters $3, more marshmallows $1. At the beginning of the marketplace we didn't get any customers, which was really frustrating. Then my cousin's brothers helped to advertise the product around the auditorium and cafeteria.  Many people started listening to him. They would ask, "Where did you get this?  Then he would tell them where our stand was!  They would come running for one, because they all wanted to marshmallow fight with each other once they saw our product!"  It was very fun to see the   smiles on people's faces .

We learned from TREP$ that if you don't advertise properly, no one will know what your product is all about, and they will just walk past you.  But when you advertise properly people will buy your product.

The Marketplace was a great opportunity for us to share our project with everyone.