Text II
YOUNG BUSINESSES
You are going to read a magazine article in which four
young people talk about running their own business. For Questions 1-15, choose
from the people A-D. The people may be chosen more than once. When more than
one answer is required, write them in alphabetical order. There is an example
at the beginning (0).
Who
went directly
from studying into business?
0
D
was refused a
bank loan?
1
ABCD
was unemployed
for a while?
2
ABCD
is thinking of
expanding their business?
3
ABCD
borrowed money
from their family?
4
ABCD
has a small
staff of people working for them?
5
ABCD
6
ABCD
gave their
original work away as gifts?
7
ABCD
discovered the
factory by reading about it?
8
ABCD
works on other
designers’ products?
9
ABCD
mentions the
amount of time their work takes?
10
ABCD
11
ABCD
has already
expanded their working space?
12
ABCD
chose their
career while learning something else?
13
ABCD
doesn’t
mention the cost of their product?
14
ABCD
sells their
product to the theatrical world?
15
ABCD
An old factory was empty for 30 years until young
people started moving in and setting up their own businesses.
A Stuart
I started up my own business
basically because I was out of work. I was fed up with applying for jobs and
not even making it to the interview stage. Anyway, I saw an article in the
local newspaper about renting work space in an old factory. You could get a
loan for any equipment and you only needed to repay the money once your
business was making a profit. Added to which the rent was very low.
So that’s exactly what I
did. I borrowed some money and bought a computer and a colour printer. I’ve
always been interested in art and design and I love music and watching videos.
I set about designing covers for music CDs and videos and sent off some of my
work to various music companies, entertainment magazines and so on and within a
year I had more orders than I could cope with by myself. Now, two years down
the line, I employ a staff of three and we’ve branched out into designing the
covers for computer games. I’ve been incredibly lucky and my business has
already taken off.
B Sonya
My parents told me about the
factory when I was looking for a studio to set up my own business. I had left
art college full of ideas as to what I was going to do. But I was horrified
when I saw the cost of renting even a tiny studio.
I produced hand-made gift
boxes and wrapping paper. Each box is individually designed and decorated with
gold flowers and butterflies. The wrapping paper is made to match and I will
also take customers’ requests if they want something very special. So, because
everything is hand-made my products are quite expensive. But you can’t buy them
in shops or supermarkets so they really are special.
Actually, as the demand for
my work has increased, I’ve now got someone working for me and I’m thinking of
setting up a mail order business, probably using the internet.
If it hadn’t been for the
opportunity to rent a space in the factory, I would still be waiting and
hoping!
C Euan
I tried to get a loan from a
bank in order to start up my business. I spent hours producing a business plan,
but the manager turned me down because she thought it would take years for me
to make any kind of profit. Well, how wrong she was! My parents lent me the
money for the first year’s rent and I started work in one of the factory’s
smallest rooms. Now, my business has grown to such an extent that I actually
rent three rooms. I make wigs for people in show business. It’s not that these
people are bald, they’ve all got their own hair. It’s just most of them are on
stage right after night and they don’t always have time to look after their
hair or get to a hairdresser. So they rely on being able to wear a wig that
exactly matches their own hair colour.
A wig is very expensive –
anything from £1000 upwards for just a small hairpiece. The raw
material to make a wig is very costly and then every hair has to be threaded by
hand so it’s hours of work. And then you have to look after a wig very
carefully; it needs to be repaired quite often which takes time. For that
reason a lot of people actually have two.
D Meryl
I moved into the factory
straight after leaving university. I studied history but ever since I was a
small child I’ve been interested in sewing. And halfway through my degree
course I realized that although I was enjoying the subject, what I really
wanted to do as a career was embroidery – that’s stitching with silk and
threads and suchlike. I used to embroider scarves for friends for birthday
presents and people loved them. So I sent some scarves to a couple of top London
stores and they placed orders almost straightaway. They send me the scarves
made by their own design team and I embroider and decorate each scarf so that
it’s completely unique and individual. As it’s a very expensive decorative
technique and takes hours to do, the scarves are only found at the top end of
the fashion market. Recently, I’ve been asked to embroider the necklines of
jackets and the bottom edges of trousers and skirts, so business continues to
expand.