| NFTE International Winner Announced! |
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International Business Plan Competition 2012 2nd February 2012 - NFTE Ireland held the International Business Plan Competition in DCU where nine businesses battled it out to be crowned International Young Entrepreneur of the Year. The prize is an all expenses paid trip to New York to be honoured at NFTE's Nineteenth Annual "Salute to the Entrepreneurial Spirit" Awards Dinner in April 2012. Aoife Maguire and Kellie Fitzgerald, both 16 and students at St Mary's Secondary School in Glasnevin were announced as the winners. They set up FingerTips last September which offers gel nail treatment for as little as five euro. They promote the business using posters and their Facebook page 'FingerTips NFTE.' Aoife described their reaction on hearing the good news; ''Our teacher Ms Griffin rang us to say we had won. We began jumping around, screaming and crying. It still hasn't sunk in.'' Kellie says they are both very ambitious; ''We get our inspiration from our mothers who are both in the beauty and fashion business. We want to take business as a leaving cert subject and then go on to study it at third level. People have stopped pampering themselves since the recession started but now they can again thanks to FingerTips.'' Eight other businesses reached the finals of the competition which was judged by Hugo MacNeill of Goldman Sachs, Jennifer Heaphy from Coca Cola, Andrew Desmond of Accenture and Pat Burke from Grant Thornton.
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