Florentyna Sidery, a final year Film and Drama student, has been announced as the winner of this year’s Business Plan Competition for her business focusing on remembrance events.
The award was announced at an event at Bath Spa University on Thursday 19th March 2015 which saw a panel of five judges sift through six finalist entries drawn from forty-four initial entries.
Each finalist had twenty-five minutes to wow the judges with their ideas with a ten minute presentation followed by a fifteen minute Q&A session. Florentyna Sidery won the competition for ‘This is My Life’.
Louisa Berrington was the runner with ‘Tetbury Nutrition and Fitness’ and Leian Meldon received the highly commended prize for ‘Paradice’ – a superfood ice-lolly product.
All of this year’s finalists were female for the first time ever in the competition.
The brief for this year featured some demanding criteria which all had to be met in order for the finalists to be selected including vision, business objectives, the product and the funding and finances.
Head of Enterprise and Employability Dave Jarman commented: “This competition allows budding entrepreneurs the chance to expand an initial concept into a strategy for getting it off the ground.
“I was really impressed with the high quality of the entries and the judges had some tough decisions to make. I want to congratulate all the finalists and I look forward to hearing how their projects progress.
“As a university we’re committed to helping creative students develop innovative businesses here in the region.”
Generously sponsored by Watertight Marketing, Santander Universities UK, Veale Wasbrough Vizards, and MarkEtest, 2015 has seen the competition enter its eighth year.
The competition was open to all Bath Spa University staff and students from all subjects as well as recent alumni and aims to provide expert feedback from professionals on business plan ideas as well as provide useful resources and support.
The prize for the award increases every year and this year the total prize fund was for over £7500 with £4000 of cash and in-kind prizes awarded to the winner, £1750 given to the Runner Up and £500 given to the highly commended achiever.
