York student’s paper clip trade (From York Press)

York student’s paper clip trade

1:48pm Monday 8th December 2008

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EAT your heart out, Del Boy – when it comes to wheeler-dealing, you’ve got nothing on Dominic Brabbs.

That’s because the York teenager has shown a knack for trading which would even put the roguish star of Only Fools And Horses in the shade to win a cut-throat business contest.

It saw Dominic, 16, who is taking A-Levels in product design, English language, film studies and maths at York College, pit his entrepreneurial wits against hundreds of other students in the Sim Balk Lane site’s Orange Paperclip Challenge.

Set up as part of the college’s role in Enterprise Week, which ran between November 17 and 23, each participant was given a single orange paperclip and, using it as a bargaining chip, allowed one week to “trade it up” to something a little more valuable – purely through their communication skills and sales patter.

Dominic, of Fulford, turned in a performance which might have earned him a “You’re hired!” from The Apprentice kingpin Alan Sugar as, within seven days, a string of swift and crafty deals saw the paperclip exchanged for a PC monitor, tower and printer/scanner – in only 12 moves.

His first deal saw him swap the paperclip for a friend’s roller tip pen, which was then traded for a plastic ruler, and similar exchanges throughout the week with family and friends saw him take possession of an A5 notepad, a Catherine Fisher novel, a DVD copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and a Greatest Hits Of The ‘70s CD.

The next string of deals saw Dominic claim six Nintendo DS games, and he then worked his way through trades in a PlayStation Portable games console, a portable DVD player, a 19-inch TV and PlayStation 3.

And the final trade-off was a family affair, as Dominic reached his objective by doing a deal with his brother for his PC – giving him an astonishing mark-up worth thousands of pounds at the end of the exercise.

“I was really surprised to win the challenge,” said Dominic.

“Even if I hadn’t won, it was all very enjoyable taking part and using my entrepreneurial skills. I found that, once people knew why I was trading, they were really responsive to my requests.”

Each student was asked to keep a diary of their trading activities and submit a record of their deal-making to a panel of judges made up of York College’s assistant principals at the end of the week.

Dominic’s prize was a Nintendo Wii, sponsored by North Yorkshire Business Education Partnership, through funding from Yorkshire Forward. He said: “Winning it is great – it’s like getting an early Christmas present.”

The idea for the college challenge came from the story of Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who bartered his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of trades spanning a year.

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