Business isn’t the natural territory of schoolgirls – but five South Hampstead School pupils are proving you’re never too young to conquer the market.

At just 12-years-old, Riya Gosrani, Izzy Lewis, Alex Willis and Molly Windust, and 13-year-old Alice Holt have set up a business, sewing and selling Hooty Owl cushions to raise money for a two-week hiking and charity trip to Romania next July.

They work from a little factory at the home of Molly’s mother Tracy McCarthy. But the project is less about sewing than selling.

The girls even get together and have pricing meetings.

Izzy said: “We don’t want to sell the cushions for too little because then you don’t make a profit. But you don’t want to have them so high that no-one buys them. I think it’s about finding a balance.”

Molly added: “At my junior school there are loads of little children, so we lowered our prices for that.

“At the private school, we raised the prices.”

So far they have made and sold 300 cushions at school stalls – raising �3,000 towards their �4,360 goal.

*S The girl’s final sales are on Saturday (November 26) at South Hampstead High School’s Festive Fair from 1pm to 4pm and at the junior school’s Winter Wonderland from 2pm to 5pm.