Earlier this year, Royal High School Bath students took part in the Atherton Award for the first time; a pioneering new award for girls' schools in the UK to celebrate girls who show initiative or entrepreneurial thinking in a STEM discipline.

Well done to Year 9 student, Sophie C, who received the award for coming up with the idea for and setting up a business in her garage that supplies eco beauty and cleaning products to consumers which she has aptly named 'The Green Garage'. She will receive a Trophy, along with £500 to go towards the next phase of her entrepreneurial journey. She will also receive a day of mentoring with Amber Atherton or someone in her network.

Sophie came up with the idea of ordering beauty and cleaning products in bulk so that her neighbours can refill their bottles on the weekend and in the evenings rather than having to get into a car to go into the city or to a refill centre.

Sophie said: “Setting up and running The Green Garage has given me a sense of purpose and I have been learning lots about management, finance and bookkeeping. I bought the initial products with a loan from my parents and have now paid that back. It has been an incredible way of learning about business loans and investing.”

The Atherton Award was set up by the renowned young British entrepreneur, Amber Atherton, who founded her first business while she was a pupil at Benenden School, and more recently, whose Y Combinator backed start-up was acquired by Discord. Amber is the author of ‘The Rise of Virtual Communities,’ published by Apress in 2023, and a partner at Patron VC, whose investment portfolio includes Tiktok, Strava, YouTube, Roblox, Duolingo, Ebay and Fitbit.

Amber Atherton was impressed with Sophie’s entrepreneurial spirit and commented: “I admire Sophie’s courage in turning her idea into a reality: buying cleaning products in bulk, creating a logo, flyers and selling out of her garage. The world desperately needs to find sustainable alternatives to plastics. That is why refilling centres are a potentially ground-breaking enterprise.”