Autumn Harp teaches students business

Vermont Business Magazine, Aug 01, 1995 by Barna, Ed

Both the Autumn Harp skin care products company and Otter Valley Union High School eighth graders learned unexpected lessons in he Otterbalm Project, a chance for the students to obtain real world experience in developing, managing and marketing a product.

The idea for the venture started with the Vermont Institute for Science, Mathematics & Technology, a non-profit group begun by Vermont educators in 1993 after successfully applying for a five-year, $10 million National Science Foundation grant aimed at systemic school reform. VSMT, as it is known, has in turn made grants to 25 schools, one of which provided $5,000 for the Otterbalm Project.

Autumn Harp is a Bristol company that since 1978 has turned its Un-Petroleum brand herbal lip balm and other products into a 60-employee company doing about $5 million worth of business in an 11,000-square-foot facility. That success, and a commitment to socially responsible business practices, helped bring founder and CEO Kevin Harper the US Small Business Administration's 1993 Vermont Businessperson of the Year award.

According to Christine Hoar, project manager for Otterbalm, Autumn Harp met with VSMIT in May 1993, and agreed that exposing students to a variety of job opportunities in the business world during their formative years would fit well with the company's goal of community involvement. A planning grant from VSMIT of about $800 began the process.

To Autumn Harp's surprise, it was hard to find a school able to participate, largely because of scheduling rigidities. But just across the county border in Brandon, Otter Valley, which has received numerous competitive grants for its innovative school restructuring efforts, was able to field an interdisciplinary team.

Even there, however, plans almost foundered when budget cuts eliminated the ninth grade team organizational structure. But in a scaled-down form, a pilot project was set up with teacher Lisa King's eighth grade 14-student "Introduction to Business" course.

Also taking part was Marketing Partners, a Burlington advertising and public relations firm that represents Autumn Harp. Co-owner and co-president Peg Devlin said, "We believe in business-education partnerships. This was an ideal One to help out with. If every business would take a group of kids to teach them something every year, all the kids in the state would be enriched by it."

Enriched educationally, that is. Among other lessons, the students found that no matter how well a product prevents chapped lips, people aren't that concerned with the problem in May.

But that's skipping ahead. First came steps meant to expose the middle school students to future opportunities in such fields as research and development, marketing, manufacturing and quality control.

BALM TREAT

For the kids, the first steps were to visit Autumn Harp and to write a mission statement for their company. Student Jessica Pomainville said of the latter, "it helps you in the long run," because it helps point out to people why to buy your product. In this case, the absence of petroleum-based ingredients was important, according to Sara Laubscher. Elizabeth Gould added that avoiding animal testing of cosmetics mattered to many consumers.

Originally, the students were to have researched the exact mixture of ingredients for Otterbalm, but to save time and make sure the project reached closure, a proven formula was selected instead. However, the students did their own brainstorming and research when it came to the name, the flavor, and the potential markets.

Two lunchtime surveys got feedback on product names and possible flavors. They ended up with Sassy Citrus, and the slogan "Clap the Chap" -- an attention-getting way of saying "get rid of the chap on your lips."

In pricing the product, the students learned that a good deal more went into the price than the cost of production, which was well below a dollar. Their $1.50 price was meant to be competitive with other, comparable salves, not the petroleum-based products, which they found ranged in price from $.99 to $1.29 and averaged about $1.22 per cylinder.

Along the way, VSMIT's goal of enhancing education bore fruit as students completed real-world worksheets on such nuts-and-bolts matters as capping torque, miscapping rates, and price point costing. Meanwhile, King was steering them through a business plan development process she had taken from "A Teen's Guide to Business," by Linda Menzies, Oren S Jenkins and Rickell R Fisher.

The planning topics came under four headings: "a description of the business," "marketing plan," "organization plan," and "financial plan."

Finally, the grant money paid for a production run of 5,500 lip balms, 4,968 of which came to Otter Valley. The rest went to VSMIT, Autumn Harp, and a few to the students themselves. On production day, the class came to the factory floor in protective clothing and learned about such things as prototype products, pour preparation, batching, and quality control -- subjects for a quiz over pizza that noon. The students themselves packaged the Otterbalm for shipping.