Show and Sell shine spotlight on young entrepreneurial minds, creative spirits

Young aspiring businessowners got a chance to put their entrepreneurial skills and marketing talents to the test at the recent Guam Community College’s Show and Sell event. KUAM covered the two-day event, seeing what participants have in store.

Set up inside the local community college, Jeffery McCoy, a student coordinator, said of the showcase, "It’s a student bazaar, almost like a pop up shop or a little flea market as I would like to think of it for myself."

He said the second-ever Show and Sell event partners students from the college’s Business and Visual Communications Department, offering aspiring businessowners from all over an opportunity to bring exposure to their small businesses, showcasing and selling their products.

"I think it’s really nice that we are able to support our students like this and give them a place to really showcase their art and their creativity and their business and just so they can get started, like get up off the ground," said McCoy.

For students like visual comms major Elizabeth Picklesimer, her art is her business. "I do a lot of portraits of different characters from movies and television shows so I thought I could turn it into stickers and people are fans of a lot of shows," she said.

"This is the first time I started this. It was my teacher who told me that I should start."

Event presenter Sean Michael Davis, owner of Studio Taiyo Guam, says it's a great way for young businessowners to learn new skills that will help them grow for years to come. "With this event, not only are they selling their crafts and get used to being in a business, they’re now getting familiar with talking to people, networking ,advertising themselves," he said. "So yes, this can definitely help them in the long run."

Along with giving them each a head start, McCoy adds it also promotes and emphasizes the buy local mindset.  "There’s a lot of talent on this island. It’s overshadowed by bigger businesses on the island and it’s not even from here. I think it’s important to support local in general because that way our economy grows in itself," he said.

And a growing contribution to the community from the more than one dozen student owned shops that participated.