LV Chamber interns get business lessons

by Valerie Miller
LVBusinessPress.com

Setting prices, handling public relations and marketing and selling Las Vegas souvenirs should keep a group of local teens busy this summer. The 16 Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce interns are learning firsthand how to run a small business and hope to turn a profit in the process.

The enterprise is called Vegas Curbside. It opened for business on June 22, housed in a kiosk in the Town Square shopping center not far from the chamber's headquarters. This is the first year that interns are invited to hawk wares such as key chains, pens, T-shirts and hats.

The teens are supplied and paid by the 2009 Summer Business Institute, a Clark County-run program, and Manpower Inc. Town Square supported the venture, chamber officials said, but details of the kiosk's space-lease agreement had not been disclosed at press time.

Margolit Sands, the intern leading the marketing effort for Vegas Curbside, said she has gained invaluable experience while working on the venture -- and a wage of $8 per hour.

"It is a good summer wage," said the recent Las Vegas Academy graduate. "We have been doing prepping for the kiosk," she said before the opening. "We have been doing marketing, creating a logo, and I have been doing the public relations aspect, myself, along with (fellow) intern Spencer Franklin."

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