'You're hired!' - Business students from Newport Girls High on national stage after competition win

Year 12 students from Newport Girls’ High School have come together to show their branding, marketing and commercial skills as part of the prestigious Young Enterprise Awards, winning the local and West Midlands finals with its ‘Tag-Along’ innovation.

The pupils came up with the innovative product, which is designed to attach your belongings to either yourself or items such as bags, suitcases and pushchairs.

Nearly £2500 of profit has already been generated through trade fairs and online sales, with the team now setting its sights on taking the national ‘YE’ title in Manchester on June 4th. If successful, they will then fly to Athens in July to represent the UK.

“The Young Enterprise journey has been an incredible experience for us – from creating the product and developing the brand to negotiating with suppliers, agreeing manufacturing deals and securing sales,” explained Tulsi Mistry, the 17-year-old Managing Director of Tag-Along.

“All of this has been done from scratch, with many of us not knowing each other before the project. We’ve worked out our individual skills, ‘who was good at what’ and pooled it all together to come up with an award-winning product that first won the Shropshire finals and then the West Midlands, beating 13 other teams in the process.”

She went on to add: “We’ve received lots of excellent support from our Young Enterprise Mentor Tony Hague, who has given up so much time to provide us with his commercial insight and knowledge of negotiations and sales.

“All eyes are now on representing Shropshire in Manchester in June and hopefully on the global stage in Athens.”

At the National Finals, Newport Girls’ High School will have to write a company report, present it and then be grilled by a team of high-profile judges.

Tag-Along has already been praised in the early rounds for providing a solution for carrying multiple items on your bag. It was initially designed to support the sports market, but the creative entrepreneurs quickly realised it could also be a godsend for parents with children and businesspeople rushing to and from meetings.

With deals already struck with two football clubs and other commercial partnerships in the making, judges said that the product offered fantastic ‘scalability’.

There are also plans to launch a sustainable bamboo fibre version of the product to improve the firm’s environmental credentials. 

Tony Hague, CEO of Midlands-based firm PP Control & Automation who has been providing advice to the students, added: “I wished I had the confidence and skills of these young people when I was 17 – their fearlessness and commercial acumen is very impressive.

“Tag-Along is obviously the team that is competing in the national finals of Young Enterprise, but there were also two other companies – FlashStash and Attachify - I supported. They were equally impressive and won several awards in the Shropshire competition, demonstrating the fantastic talent we have coming through into the business world.

“Young Enterprise is a fantastic programme, giving young people the opportunity to put some of the theory learned in class into a real-world, commercial project that can give them experience and skills for later in their career.”

Paul Bentley, Economics Teacher at Newport Girls’ High School, added: “All three of our Young Enterprise Teams have performed superbly this year and the icing on the cake has been Tag-Along’s journey to the National Finals.

“The skills and attributes our students have developed this year will be invaluable to them as they complete their studies and enter the world of work.”