Six professional accounting sub-degree students met Ms. Winnie Lau, one of our CIE first cohort Business Division alumni who is now a successful entrepreneur and our programme mentor and stepped into the retail business world, helping her in booth management and sell to holiday crowds. What began with arranging displays, pricing products, and greeting customers quickly turned into a full immersion in operations, marketing, and hands-on accounting.
Before a two-day pop-up at “The Peak”, three of the students met with their mentor to study the product range, understand customer preferences, and propose a promotion strategy. Guided by the mentor’s advice, they planned and produced a short promotion video to attract customers.
When the pop-up opened at The Peak, those three students set up, organized, and ran the booth entirely on their own for two consecutive days. They arrived early to stage inventory, refreshed displays as demand shifted, welcomed tourists and locals, handled receipts and mobile payments with care, and refilled stock during peak hours. Each evening, they closed the books, preparing a simple profit and loss account that reconciled receipts to sales and costs, and noted which products and promotions drove margins. The setup, service, and end-of-day reconciliation gave the students a practical framework for linking numbers to decisions.
All six students joined our mentor at the Chinese New Year flower market and exhibition sales, where the pace intensified and every interaction mattered. They learned from their mentor and her team to respond quickly to customer questions, adjust bundles, and watch inventory levels closely to reduce stock-outs. Observing the mentor at work became a lesson in adaptive selling. Cheung shared that she learned by watching how the mentor interacted with different customers and changed her technique based on the booth environment. Siu reflected on the personal growth behind the scenes: “I used to be shy, but these experiences changed me. I’m more open now and not scared to talk to strangers.” All six students agreed these experiences strengthen their teamwork, communication skills, and the entrepreneurial mindset and opportunity recognition through hands-on selling skills. Our mentor, Ms. Winnie Lau praised the team’s reliability, commitment and hard work.
