Trubambu, SPFy, Zenith, and Aquaterra. All of these are teams from Mrs. Demchak’s Virtual Enterprises classes. But this year, a new team joins the lineup: Sway.

After placing gold for their company brand in a January trade show, and advancing to the finals of the Long Island Business Plan Competition, Sway is feeling confident.

High school is a very stressful time in a teenager’s life. Many teens struggle with distressing. That’s where Sway comes from. This mixed group of students all agreed that they were stressed out and wanted a company to help fix that. Serena Robbins, the CEO of Sway, said, “We wanted to help ourselves out as well as future generations and hammocks seemed like the way to do it.”

The name Sway almost seemed all too obvious.  “Once we knew we were going to sell hammocks the name came easy, everyone brainstormed and believed Sway captured the essence of our firm,” Serena continued.

Serena believes that being the CEO is challenging but also a very rewarding experience. “It comes with responsibility and sometimes it’s hard to be a leader among your peers, having to designate tasks and work to your friends.”

Sway has one more trade show to attend this upcoming month. The VE team will encounter many new people and companies that aren’t even from this nation! This show–which is taking place at LIU Brooklyn–is a very big one for Sway. They will be buying and selling products with firms from all over. Serena believes they will do great. “I think our team will be able to make a lot of sales with firms coming from all over the world.”

Cody Riccio, a senior student of Sway, believes that there isn’t much pressure on the team anymore, but refuses to give up. “Well because of Sway not making it to Nationals there is less pressure for sure but I think that we are going to still give it our all and try our best.”

However, throughout the year Sway has felt some pressure. Some members feel as if they have big shoes to fill because of the legacies left by the other teams. Cody said, “We definitely had a lot to live up to. Every VE class prior to Sway did amazing and especially with Aquaterra coming in 1st place at Nationals so the pressure was definitely there.”

Interestingly, Mrs. Demchak has another VE team within that class. This team, Fresh Focus, has been named one of the top three teams in the country. They will be competing in New York City on April 17th for a chance to win $10,000 to actually start their company.

Good luck to both of these teams!