The winner of this year's NBR Online Audacious Challenge was Otago University master of entrepreneurship student Clay Caird, who plans to have his promotional headgear product colouring the crowds at all top-level rugby union/league games within a year.
The audacious challenge is a joint initiative by the Dunedin City Council, the University of Otago School of Business and Otago Polytechnic to encourage tertiary students to pitch business ideas.
It gives potential entrepreneurs assistance and knowledge to set up their own businesses, and seminars were held throughout the year providing practical support on topics such as business planning, law, website development and finance.
Mr Caird (25) said his cardboard helmets were based on the protective headgear worn by rugby players and featured each team's colours, and the sponsor's brand on the front.
The headgear was designed to be worn by fans in support of their team and, thereby, to provide exposure for the sponsor.
He said he got the idea for them when he saw something similar while playing ice hockey in Holland in 2007.
He formed his company, Creative Hype!, this year and, with some assistance from his mother and her contacts in printing, has already had some success, with Sydney league team the Rabbitohs ordering the cardboard headgear for a game earlier this year.
The $25,000 prize for winning the Audacious Challenge would go a long way towards helping him take his business to the next level, he said.
He would use some of the cash to travel to Australia, where he planned to conduct a sustained marketing campaign targeting the NRL and the major teams in the league.
The runners-up for the top prize were Julien Van Mellaerts and Will Horton and their company Namida Wasabi Spirit, which makes wasabi vodka.
Arjun Haszard (26), who is studying towards a postgraduate diploma in commerce at Otago University, won the other big prize of the night, the prize for entrepreneurship, for his and business partner Cameron McPhail's business Quick Brown Fox, which makes organic liqueurs.
They had so far produced 17 litres of coffee and cinnamon liqueur in the kitchen of Strictly Coffee in Dunedin, but had plans to get their own kitchen and still and make a variety of new flavours, Mr Haszard said.
The liqueur was a boutique product targeted at the "hipster" customer, and was the first organic spirit made in New Zealand, he said.
"We're gonna make it huge."
