When the members of Blue Coat’s Young Enterprise group, Lignum, got together to come up with a product idea, they wanted something groundbreaking that would be environmentally sound and sustainable. They came up with personalised wooden products – being made and marketed under the name “Lignum” – Latin for “wood”.

The 12-student team – Amy, Matthew C, Cassian, Charlie, Anand, Anya, Matthew J, Ollie, Ethan, Oliver, Dominick and William – is made up of six makers and six marketers; a combination of Design Technology students and Business and Economics students.  Each maker is in charge of a different product, Cassian is in charge of orders, and the marketing team does what it says on the tin. Each member of the team has an equal share in the company, and the profits will be evenly split.

The team’s ideas had their first airing at a Dragons’ Den-style event organised by Blandy and Blandy in Reading in November – when they were able to pitch their idea and talk about their plans for their product.  They won the event and, in fact, elicited what can only be called a rave review from one of the judges: “I would like to single out team ‘Lignum’, who were simply outstanding. Their business, although not a unique concept, was ‘real world’ and scalable and their products were of a professional standard. They had formed a team with the perfect balance of business acumen and engineering talent. In three years, they were the best team I have encountered. In fact, having previously worked in education and participated in similar competitions with A Level, undergraduate and masters students, this was among the best, if not the best, businesses I’ve seen students devise.”

The team have now launched the Lignum website http://lignumuk.com/, where they are marketing six handmade, personalisable oak products – and will be happy to take your orders!

This year’s second Young Enterprise team is Qwench, who make a personalised water bottle infuser. Blandy and Blandy commented about the team: “… team ‘Qwench’, at this early stage already had a well-developed product and idea and had clearly put an excellent amount of work in to the project to date.”