Emmanuel Enemokwu, a third-year Accounting and Management student at Kent Business School has been shortlisted for Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year at the Kent Student Awards.
The Kent Student Award for Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year recognises an individual or team who has demonstrated innovation, impact, skills, dedication and commitment as a result of running a business while studying at the University. The judges are less interested in profit and loss and more interested in what a student has taken from the experience (tackling of issues, challenges and opportunities).
Emmanuel, a BSc Accounting and Management at KBS, is the founder of Jehu-cal a street fashion brand which has already turned over more than £10,000 in trade.
Emmanuel reached the final staged of the Business Start-Up Journey 2017 and is now on a self-employed placement running his business for a year. Emmanuel said: “The best thing has been putting everything that I’ve learned from Year 9 until my second year of uni into real life. I’ve been able to think about what I learned in different seminars – and then implement it.”
“I have started to use 50% recycled raw materials in my tracksuit bottoms – that came from a CSR module. I considered the issues and thought ‘what could Jehu-cal do’ and decided that using the recycled raw materials was important – I’m planning to increase that amount as well”.
“One of the biggest challenges is staying motivated. I had taken a break from my company, I hadn’t put out any collections and needed to get my brand back on track. When sales went down, so did my motivation. I didn’t know what to do. But doing an internship at Dune London as part of the placement was the thing that changed everything”.
Emmanuel’s aim is to scale up his business whilst completing his exams. The course usually allows a student to do a year in industry, but Emmanuel opted to complete a self employed placement year.
The judges had the very difficult task of narrowing down over 250 excellent nominations to the following shortlist. The winning students will be announced at the gala dinner on Friday 1 June. The winner in each category will receive their very own brick in the University’s ‘Footsteps Path‘, a certificate and their achievement will be recognised on their Higher Education Achievement Report when they graduate.
To find out more about the Self Employed Placement programme and the criteria for joining either email ASPIRE@kent.ac.uk or Kimberley Munden K.E.S.Munden@kent.ac.uk