Eighty Business students from North Hertfordshire College will be spending this term working with international entrepreneur Lara Morgan to design the female version of the successful Gate8 luggage – men’s travel case. Working in teams, the students will be competing against each other, with the winning design being manufactured and the winning students’ prize will one week of shadowing Lara, who has recently been awarded the accolade of the UK’s 10 most powerful businesswomen.
British IT consultant Alistair Callender designed the Gate8 luggage to solve the problem of long queues at the airport check-in by creating a cleverly designed piece of hand luggage which eliminates the need for hold baggage. The Gate8 luggage concept has been backed by entrepreneur Lara Morgan, who sold her hotel industry toiletries and amenities company Pacific Direct Ltd for £20million. Lara has also been named as one of the UK’s 10 most powerful businesswomen by MSN Lifestyle alongside JK Rowling and Victoria Beckham.
The Gate8 luggage for men has proved so successful that Lara and Alistair have decided to launch the female version. Students who study the Level 3 Extended Diploma in Business at NHC will be working with Lara to design the female luggage, benefitting from Lara’s business and sales experience and receiving training and master classes from Lara herself.
Lara launched the project by visiting the college and speaking to the students about the product they will be creating. Talking about the project Lara said: “Bringing a wholly commercialised project to the students will enable them to apply sales skills and business planning to a real-life experience. Starting at product inception and working through to marketplace product management will provide students with a memorable enterprise experience, and there will be the opportunity to earn income for whichever team wins.”
In addition to Lara, students studying business at NHC will receive training and master classes from Ruth Amos the founder of StairSteady who won Young Engineer of the Year for Britain, Alyssa Smith, multi award-winning internal jewellery designer and ex-NHC student and Oli Barrett MBE, Director and Co-Founder of Start-up Britain.
Angela Mclean, Assistant Principal at NHC commented: “This is a fantastic opportunity for our students to gain business skills from a real life project whilst accessing training, master classes and mentoring from leading business figures both in the UK and internationally, providing them with opportunities that some CEOs can only dream about!”
Lara Morgan is an award-winning entrepreneur and international best-seller of ‘More Balls Than Most’. She is the Founder of CompanyShortcuts.com, a source of practical advice and frameworks to enable businesses leaders to achieve accelerated growth. She is seriously passionate about Leadership, Self and Employee Motivation and Business Growth; and she regularly talks about these and other specific topics based on her own experiences. Company Shortcuts has been founded to build a legacy trust that will sponsor ambitious enterprise leaders up to 50% of course costs to support enterprise growth acceleration courses. To further information about her other business interests please visit www.Laramorgan.co.uk