A GROUP of teenagers have won top honours in a competition designed to find the best young business talent in Oxfordshire’s schools.

Pupils from Oxford High School formed their own company called Eclectic, and wrote, illustrated and published the children’s book Frideswide the Owl, before striking up deals to have it printed in India and China as well as the UK.

As a result, they claimed the overall title of Best Company at the Young Enterprise county finals held at the Said Business School in central Oxford.

Managing director Rosie Hore, 17, said: “This makes all our hard work worth while.

“We have a great team and although we have to liquidate the company at the end of the academic year, we will reform it to sell the book in India and China.

“The experience has encouraged us all to be entrepreneurs in the future.”

As well as the overall title, Eclectic also picked up the Challenge Cup for Marketing and Market Research and the award for the Best Financial Report, making it a triple celebration for the youngsters.

Eclectic managed to triumph over seven other companies in the hotly contested final including two other rival Oxford High School groups.

Their teacher Mike Gallagher said: “I thought all our teams were brilliant — in all we had 35 girls taking part as Young Enterprise is something we really value.

“I thought Eclectic’s product was exciting and the group work so well together, especially when it came to translating and rewriting the book in other languages.”

RoXsolid, from the North Oxfordshire Academy, Banbury won the Business Link award for best business plan.

Every company had to give a five-minute presentation to an audience of more than 200 business people, academics and teachers at the award ceremony last month.

Four other awards were shared by two teams from The School of St Helen and St Katharine, Abingdon, including the Oxford Mail Award for the Best Use of Publicity which was picked up by Silhouette, from the School of St Helen and St Katherine, Abingdon.

Gordon Beach, chairman of the Young Enterprise Oxfordshire County Board, said: “It has been a fantastic contest and I have been amazed by the standard of all the companies that have taken part in Young Enterprise this year.

“I know Eclectic will be excellent ambassadors for Oxfordshire in the next stage of the competition and I wish them all well for the future.”

More than 500 students from 30 schools took part in Young Enterprise during the course of the school year.

Eclectic will now go forward to the South East regional final of the Young Enterprise competition on June 18.

The winners of that will take part in a national final between July 6 and 8, and the overall winner will go on to represent the UK at the Junior Achievement event in Canada later in the year.