Recently WayBound held an open house that was open to all students to come and visit the new cubicle setup. For most high schoolers, usually they do not get assigned a cubicle until after graduation, but with Virtual Enterprises International, or known short as VEI, this not the case. With business growing, VEI members are expanding into a new office space inside the school.

“The virtual business on the VEI’s website and people from other VEI firms can buy our baskets and we’ll ship them a picture of what the baskets look like they purchased, but they won’t actually receive a real basket with real food. It’s all virtual,“ CFO Nina Lombardi said. “ We also moved into the new offices right after Christmas break.”

The offices are located in room 6-112. The outskirts of the room have the cubicles, while the center has a table for company meetings. The company that VEI runs is called WayBound inc.;  it focuses on providing food baskets for the lowest price. Customers have the choice to pick from multiple basket options also including special seasonal baskets. Customers will receive the groceries within a few shipping days.

“We decided to build offices because almost every other company involved with VEI has them,” senior Tony Acho said. “The best part was being picked to come up with the design for the offices. Mr. Burwitz told me what materials I had to fit in the CADD drawing of the room and I just found the best way to make it work. We had to have enough room for our class plus a little extra incase there’s a bigger class next year so I tried to make it as roomy as possible.”

The new offices were built to help students feel like they are in a business environment. The purpose of attending trade shows is to find multiple ways to bring in customers and to help a business to grow, trade shows can also be an economical way of getting sales.

“The students go to trade shows all over,” Burwitz said. “Last year they went to Chicago and this year there are three different shows. One in Holland, MI, one in Pigeon Forge,TN, and one in New York.”

The offices were built to help simulate what business is like after graduation for those who are going into the business field.The members of VEI are also able to travel to different locations for a variety of events. This includes national and international trade shows, competitions and challenges which make up the key components for the VEI program.