Students showcase full-blown business plans

Human Sciences students have once again proven that they’re ready to do more than simply work for a business – they’re ready to run one.

 

The Department of Apparel, Educational Studies, and Hospitality Management (AESHM) hosted dozens of students, faculty and business owners for the fourth annual College of Human Sciences Entrepreneurship Showcase on May 1.

 

The showcase featured 23 business plans generated by undergraduate and graduate students in Assistant Professor Linda Niehm’s entrepreneurship in human sciences class (AESHM 474/574). The poster displays packing LeBaron Hall represented semester-long efforts that had the students developing concepts for original businesses or enhancing existing ones.

 

Students were required to research and detail their business’s market, financing, target demographic, location, competition, and more. Their ideas ranged from a shop that transforms outdated garments into chic outfits to an eco-friendly interior design store.

 

“It’s a unique opportunity that goes above and beyond just a regular class project,” Niehm said. “We try to give them the opportunity to apply the skills and concepts they learn in class, because they may go out and start their own business. Along the way, they’re also learning entrepreneurial skills: innovation, resource leveraging [and] risk-taking."

 

AESHM faculty were joined by members of the ISU Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship and Ames proprietors in judging the students’ presentations on a variety of criteria, including feasibility, marketability, delivery and visual appeal.

 

"It was my first showcase, and I have to tell you how impressed I am with everybody,” said Bob Bosselman, AESHM department chair. “I can’t imagine I would have ever been able to do anything like this in college.”

 

Steve Carter, director of the ISU Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship, agreed. “We’ve done this for four years now. By far, this was uniformly the best that I’ve seen from a group of students,” he said. “I was really impressed with the sincere effort, the thoroughness with which all the plans and presentations were put together.”

 

The Best of Show (New Business Start-Up Idea) award went to Imaginary Parties, the brainchild of Andrea Lansing, Jayleen Sperfslage and Kristina Gage. Their business would serve as a site where parents take their young children for birthdays and other celebrations.

 

"A lot of people go to Chuck E. Cheese, but that’s loud and it’s chaotic,” Lansing said. “[Ours] is a little more high-scale. The biggest thing is [that] parents want to spend time with their kids on their birthday – they don’t want to be cooking and running around. It basically takes all the stress off the parents.”

 

Niehm praised her class for designing plans that can be transferred from white paper to the business world, noting that at least half of her students are considering it. “I’ve talked one-on-one with the students and have a strong sense that [many] will do this at some point,” she said.

 

Niehm understands why entrepreneurship is so attractive to students. “We look at job change and how various industries are downsizing, condensing, changing. Not everybody’s cut out for the big, corporate setting,” she said. “Or … you tire of that and want to chart your own destiny – there’s an opportunity that you recognize in the marketplace that spurs your interest in wanting to do it.”

 

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, Niehm hopes that the experience prepares her students for whatever path they choose. “They can use what they learned and applied in this project in a lot of different job and life contexts,” she said. “If you have this skill-set, that gives you more options. I think that’s one of the great things about it – whether they do it tomorrow, or 10 years from now, or 30 years from now.”

 

For Niehm, watching the projects come together is an inspirational process. “To see what they created – it’s pretty amazing,” she said. “It restores your faith in the fact that the human mind … can be so creative, and look at things so differently. Where some people see nothing, other people see opportunity.”