Junior Achievement Company Club, a club for entrepreneurs, pays its members a salary while offering them a chance to market a student product.

“We have two types of salary. One is for general members. They are paid a quarter per meeting. The other type is for officers, which are basically presidents of different departments, and they get 75 cents per meeting. They do really have to work a lot more and sacrifice a lot more for time. This year we had around 18 meetings,” said Lillian Leung, founder.

Students in the club come up with a product idea and sell it to people in the area. “Our product ended up being a tea bottle which is basically a water bottle that has two openings: one on the bottom, with a filter, where you put tea leaves in, and on the top where you pour water. It was $10 per bottle, and they came in different colors.” Leung said.

According to Leung, the club improved tremendously this year in sales. “At first we planned to have more parents and teachers to buy it, but in the end, a lot of students were interested as well, which was really surprising but obviously that made us happy,” Leung said.

Leung credits the success to the club’s greater work ethic. “We think that a major part is that we really took the initiative to approach customers. We actually went to baseball games and soccer games, and actually approached parents,” Leung said.

Interest in the product was much higher this year as well. “I would say this year was actually more successful because last year a lot of people bought it because it was cheap , but this year people actually wanted the product. It was $10, and we were still able to manage to sell all of them, so that’s really quite an achievement,” Leung said.

Leung believes that the club offers students a lot of business opportunities that extend beyond the classroom. “JA company is this really great club for students who have hands-on experience on what a company actually looks like, and what’s really involved in it. It’s not something you see from a textbook, but you actually immerse in the experience, and we form really good relationships,” Leung said.