Education: A grant is only the start for a student tycoon: We sell earrings from 99p

WHILE most students just manage to eke out a living, their entrepreneurial colleagues prosper. Some of them run their own businesses as self-styled free marketeers; others do it simply to boost their meagre incomes. Gareth Davies, Steph McKeown, Emma Peacock and Rachel Powell-Ford spoke to four students who have used grants, loans and other borrowings to earn themselves a more comfortable life than the archetypal undergraduate.

SEAN ELLMAN, 20, is in the second year of a BA in combined studies at Manchester University. He and a friend run Salsa, a company that sells jewellery and gifts at two markets.

'I have a market stall at the university market and another at Stockport a couple of days each week. I do a bit of wholesaling as well: we supply three or four shops in Manchester city centre.

'We make some jewellery, we buy some. We also design hats. The earrings we sell go from about 99p to pounds 3 or pounds 4. Everybody from grandparents to little kids buys them.

'We've been doing it since September. A friend came up to me and said, 'Do you fancy going into business?' I was in need of some money, wasn't willing to be exploited in a bar because the money's pathetic, and I thought, 'If I'm going to work, I'm going to work for myself'.

'We each put in a couple of hundred pounds. January turned over around pounds 1,000, but February turned over pounds 2,500, so it's continuing at quite a pace. We're talking about a turnover of pounds 600 to pounds 800 a week.

'It's hard work. I get people to fill in for me a lot of the time as well. I manage not to miss any school. On Tuesdays I go to the market between tutorials, and on Thursdays I don't have any lectures.

'I don't do it out of financial desperation. I get more than a full grant from parental contribution anyway. But if I was living on a normal full grant I wouldn't manage.'