Perfume pen earns Southland girls national award

ROBYN EDIE/The Southland Times

INNOVATIVE IDEA: Year 10 Southland Girls High School students Caitlin Andrews and Siobhan McArthur show off their perfume pen that won a national award.

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Success has never smelt so sweet for a group of Southland Girls' High School students whose innovative idea has won them a national award.

The perfume pen developed by Harriet Bell, Amelia Gray, Caitlin Andrews and Siobhan McArthur was named most innovative product or service when the Enterprise Studies Programme announced its national award winners.

The scheme, run by Enterprise New Zealand, challenges year 10 students to develop a product and business plan inside a set budget, as part of their social studies curriculum.

The girls' teacher, Michelle Diack, said Southland Girls' was the only South Island school to win an award this year.

The fully functioning pen contains a vial of perfume as well as ink and is applied via a spray nozzle on its top. The girls said they were looking to design something "practical yet feminine" that would appeal to their classmates.

It comes in a variety of fragrances, including Dior, Elizabeth Arden, Calvin Klein and even the Britney Spears fragrance Beauty.

Caitlin said the perfume pen was such a hot item at the school's young enterprise market day that all 45 sold out in 15 minutes.

Siobhan said their success was born out of teamwork and commitment to the project.

The girls put in about 40 hours of their own time on top of the 40 hours of class time they were given, she said.

"Usually it's the men who do well with all this business stuff but we showed them how to do it."

Harriet said working to strict deadlines and keeping to a modest budget of $60 was the hardest part of the whole project.

As winners, the girls receive $850 and will spend Thursday and Friday in Wellington at the awards ceremony.

Amelia said they would also visit Te Papa, Weta Workshop, Parliament and find time for a bit of shopping.

"I don't know what our next project will be. Maybe we will figure out how to get perfume into a pencil sharpener or an eraser?"

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