Teamwork is key, say the Brainy Bikers

The importance of teamwork is the lesson the young entrepreneurs behind Brainy Bikers have identified as the most important one at this stage in their business lives. Shuana Robinson, Aoife Lynch, Michaela O'Rourke and Megan Smith (Josephine Fitzpatrick was away) took a valuable half hour out of their hectic schedule last Thursday and called at The Anglo-Celt to discuss Brainy Bikers and its product Handle With Care, a device they've designed to help kids learn to ride a bike. The transition year team are participating in the Junior Achievement Awards and the Student Enterprise Awards (the finals are in March), in which their school, Loreto College, had such success in 2009 with the College Survival Guide booklet - they were national chamipons and made the European finals in Brussels. That inspired the Brainy Bikers when their turn came, though two of them, Shuana and Michaela, had some experience in the field, from when they took part in the intermediate category of the competitiaon. That time they produced a make-up booklet with tips on application and skin care, but found their 2010 product "a lot more awkward, it's not as easy as bringing it to a printer", according to Michaela. So how did they come up with the idea for Handle With Care? Megan explained: "We were in Cavan town looking around the shops to see if there was anything we could improve on, and we went upstairs in Connolly's and saw the bikes, and the trikes that had bars parents can push so kids don't have to cycle." Megan suggested to her colleagues that they could make something along those lines for older children learning to manage two wheels, perhaps encouraged by the memory of teaching her six-year-old cousin Grace to ride her bike last summer. "I found it awkward," she said, "you have to lean over and you don't have much control, and it was just like pushing her along rather than her cycling." Shauna takes over the story to explain how they started things moving: "Once we decided we wanted to make it, we spoke to my father because he's a mechanic and he said he could make it. There was an old swing at the bottom of the garden so we cut that and welded it as a prototype, but it was the colour of metal and didn't look right, it wasn't finished smoothly... For the handle we took the top off a plastic shovel. "We hoped my father could make them but he wouldn't have time, so we took quotes from engineers around Cavan, and James at Dourneen Engineering in Ballinagh was the best. He was brilliant at helping us." Brainy Bikers showed James the first Handle With Care prototype and explained "what went wrong". He made a second to their specifications, using different materials. "The second prototype needed to be a lot lighter," said Shauna, "and the clamp didn't attach to the bike properly," added Megan. The one in the accompanying photo is the third version, though the girls were planning further improvements to the paint finish. "It was coming up to Christmas and Clarke's had said they would take some to sell," said Shauna. "James said he could make them but with the cold weather the paint wasn't drying, so we had to leave them... it dried completely in the drier weather, but the paint needs to be powder coated." The five Brainy Bikers have already sold two units each and received encouraging feedback from their customers, who are 'hugely impressed', their children 'learned so much quicker, they have much more balance', 'it's easy to attach' and it's 'cheap' (at €20). Their target is a realistic 30 sales, which would realise a 50% profit on their budget for Brainy Bikers, a margin that any business would be proud to achieve. They have designed and printed flyers to help achieve those numbers and have identified Clarke's as particularly important to the success of Handle With Care, though they still have to clarify its status in terms of category (bike accessory? toy?) and safety. The girls expressed thanks to their school, their business teacher Ms Dolan and "all our sponsors" , including the Co. Enterprise Board. If you would like to buy a Handle With Care, contact Loreto College on 049-4332881 and ask for one of the girls (names above and in the photo), or look out for the flyers around the town.