Split into small groups, the students spent five days getting under the skin of how a real product comes to life, using the launch of our brand-new Dualit Ice Cream Maker as their project brief. It was a week of trying new things, working as a team, and presenting to a room full of people they had never met before.
A Week Across Five Departments
Rather than simply observing from the sidelines, the students rolled up their sleeves and got hands on across five different departments:
-
Marketing: creating a marketing email campaign and point of sale concepts for the Ice Cream Maker, thinking carefully about audience and messaging rather than just aesthetics.
-
Ecommerce: conducting competitor analysis to understand pricing, positioning, and what makes the Dualit Ice Cream Maker stand out.
-
Graphic Design: filming and editing content in our studio to produce a social media reel, from recipe videos to product showcases.
-
Product Engineering: a session with our Technical Director designing a spatula using CAD, later 3D printed for their final presentation.
-
Consumable Engineering (Food Tech): researching, developing, testing, and refining their own original ice cream recipe with our Food Technologist.
Along the way, the students also enjoyed a factory tour, ice-breaker sessions, and a welcome talk from Alex, our Owner and Director, who shared Dualit's ethos of embracing failure and looking out for one another as a family business.
Bringing It All Together
Every group worked continuously throughout the week to build towards one goal: a final presentation on Friday afternoon in front of a judging panel. Each group had 25 minutes to walk the panel through their ecommerce insights, showcase their marketing email and POS work, show their social media reel, and the moment everyone was waiting for present and serve their own ice cream flavour for tasting.
Prizes were awarded across four categories: Best Social Reel, Best Marketing Collateral, Best Ice Cream Recipe, and Best Analysis.
Supporting the Next Generation
We are proud to play our part in supporting the next generation of talent by giving young people real, valuable workplace experience and a genuine insight into careers in engineering, marketing, design, and ecommerce.
A huge thank you to The Harlequins Foundation for helping organise such a fantastic week, and to our brilliant panel, including Julian Patient of Marlborough College and George Green of The Harlequin Foundation for giving up their time to watch the presentations and taste-test the results.
Following the success of the week, it was especially rewarding to welcome one of the students, Kingston Stewart, back to Dualit just a month later for further work experience. Having taken the initiative to reach out himself, Kingston spent additional time with our Marketing Department, working closely in Ecommerce and in Product Marketing to deepen his understanding of how Dualit works. It was fantastic to see his enthusiasm continue beyond the original programme.
Most importantly, thank you to all the students for your enthusiasm, creativity, and hard work. We hope to see some of you back at Dualit one day!
Read more about the partnership behind this programme on The Harlequins Foundation's website.
