Story by Kimberly Hsueh
Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Gabriel Tom
Contributor
SPHS’ Virtual Business teams received high marks in its final competition of the year, the Bay Area Trade Fair, on Sunday, Mar. 15. Although the conference was canceled due to the coronavirus epidemic, South Pas’ companies — GLO and ARCH — submitted their competition materials on Feb. 14 via the Virtual Enterprise International website.
The varsity Virtual Business team’s company, ARCH, competed in four categories: Micro Capital Business Challenge (susbus), Video Commercial, Employee Handbook, and Financial Statements. Juniors Matthew Baer, Nicole Kim, Matteo Lee, and Charis Cheung placed third with their written business plan in susbus — an entirely new business competition unique to the Bay Area Trade Fair.
Senior Ryan Wallace (ARCH) placed second in the Video Commercial, while senior Nicole Ngu and juniors Meagan Chang, Lindsey Hirano, and Nicole Lu (ARCH) received a silver award for their employee manual for Employee Handbook.
Junior varsity’s company GLO also took home honors, with senior Monty Decker (GLO) placing first in Video Commercial. Both Financial Statements teams took home bronze awards, with Matthew Wolf, Jason Kim, and Colin Sheng representing ARCH and Alex Khan and Franco DeLeon representing GLO.
The ARCH varsity virtual business team began their success at their regional competition in December, using their company’s focus on selling tiny houses in order to win over judges. Both ARCH and GLO moved onto the semi-final competition in Bakersfield, receiving multiple gold, silver, and bronze awards.
“Despite San Francisco getting cancelled due to coronavirus, I’m happy with the work my team did on susbus,” Lee said. “We put in a lot of hours and effort, and successfully made it to the presentation round, even though we’re not presenting now. The whole company took the news of the cancellation well considering it would be our last trade fair together. We needed a bit of a morale boost though, so I’m glad we found some success with our online submissions.”
