HAYLEY FOSTER 

Fall semester of 2022,17 of my classmates & I had the incredible opportunity to start a business on BYUI campus- Scratch. Scratch provides scratch off activity based cards filled with fun activities to do in Rexburg, Idaho. Each card has truths & dares on the back to spice up the activities & to ultimately bring people closer together. Our mission statement was to lift others with the goal of bringing together a community here in Rexburg. We hosted many events to help bring people together & to do Scratch activities together. 

I also had the opportunity this semester to be the CMO of Scratch for the first rotation as we started up the company. (We had three rotations to better understand each department of a business- marketing, finance, & operations.) During my time as CMO my marketing team & I were able to create over 80 landing pages for our website as each of our Scratch cards had an individualized QR code linked to our website. Each activity was pre-planned for the user and the website had all the details one would need to know including hours of operation, price, a google map link to the destination, etc. My team & I ran the social media for Scratch producing content and posting daily. We also planned & hosted Scratch events including a bonfire as well as a concert with local bands. We created promo cards, held giveaways, & learned so much about how to market to increase sales (especially learning how to measure our marketing efforts!) We posted to social media daily creating reels and ads that increased awareness for the new business. 

I learned so much fall semester beginning this business. My top three takeaways from starting Scratch were:

    1.    We learn the most from our failures! Obviously things don’t always work out how we anticipate, but it is truly how we respond to the failure that can greater our success. 

    2.    Company culture is so important! The more unified you are with your team the more you are able to accomplish together. 

    3.    Networking is extremely beneficial & creating good relationships with customers & partners is extremely important.