“You can tell they have salespeople on their team.” That was what Martin Stocker, president of Metalumen Manufacturing Inc., a Guelph-based lighting systems company, said about the team of students who made the best business pitch during the Bridges to International Practice Competition on April 2. Not only did the students win over the competition’s judges, including Stocker, but they also won a trip to Brazil later this month, sponsored by Metalumen, to put their skills into practice.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” said Dave Howard, a fourth-year accounting student, just minutes after his team was announced as the winner. “We’re so excited.”
Winning a trip to Brazil was a welcome reprieve from studying for final exams and rehearsing for end-of-term presentations, said Howard’s teammate Ben Bickers, a third-year marketing student. He credited their win to the extra work they did behind the scenes. “We contacted resources that we don’t think anyone else would have thought to have contacted,” said Bickers. The team met with representatives of Metalumen to get insider information.
Getting information directly from the client was their only option. “That was the only challenge: you had no textbook, so you had to find your own resources,” says teammate Maggie Chen, a third-year marketing student. “All of our work actually paid off.”
As part of the international marketing course, offered by the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, students had the option of developing a business plan for Metalumen’s expansion into Brazil. Stocker gave the students a mandate at the beginning of the term, which became their term project.
The top five teams were selected to compete in the finals before six judges, including U of G faculty and representatives from Metalumen. During a 15-minute presentation, each team discussed Brazil’s commercial environment, an entry strategy, a distribution model and how to deal with potential challenges.
When Prof. Sylvain Charlebois, the course instructor, started looking for a corporate partner for the course, he asked for recommendations from the Guelph Chamber of Commerce. Metalumen was on the list. “This particular program depends on two things: hard-working students and a very good corporate partner,” said Charlebois. “I just felt during our first meeting that Metalumen was the right partner for the course.”
Applying their knowledge outside the classroom made the competition a valuable experience for the students, said Howard. “It brought relevance to what we’re doing. I think the hardest part about academics today is bringing some element of relevance to what we’re doing. Is what I’m learning going to be useful in the real world? The whole course was situated around this project, which is the real world. There was nothing that wasn’t applicable in this whole course.”
Stocker said he was impressed by the students’ ideas and professionalism. “We’re going to use those ideas for examining other markets as well. It’s important to have that broadening of horizons. Far too often, you get into groupthink. Exercises like this allow us to get away from that. My strategies have certainly changed because of the ideas that have been presented to us.”