2008 Woodie Awards
Entrepreneurship Club up and running
Club created by students provides business consulting, youth business camp, unique MSU T's
by Dannielle Higginbotham
Issue date: 1/29/08
Section: Campus News
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The brainchild of the Minnesota State Entrepreneurship Club, Maverick Solutions, situated in the alumni-sponsored "Entrepreneur Accelerator" space in University Square, provides business consulting, a youth business camp and MSU t-shirts. The store - which opened Monday with a grand-opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony - is the result of an idea of management senior Noah Balow, marketing senior Ashton Pankonin, management junior Kevin Lake and finance junior Marty Deslauriers.
"It took hours and hours of brainstorming," Deslauriers said. "We knew we wanted our own business, but we weren't sure what we wanted to do. Finally we came up with the idea that we wanted to do consulting and advise other students interested in setting up their own company, and also sell T-shirts and be a place that students could go to if they wanted their own printed."
He added that after coming up with the idea for the business itself, they needed to find available space.
"After putting so much work into this, we're really excited for the store to finally open, especially since we had such a huge turnout at the grand-opening," Deslauriers said.
Shane Bowyer, advisor to the Entrepreneurship Club, said that while he offered the occasional bit of advice, the students established the business on their own.
"They came up with the idea for the store during fall semester and have been working on it since then," Bowyer said. "I know there were a lot of meetings and work over winter break. They wanted a business they could sustain while in school, and this seemed like the perfect idea for them."
The students' main hopes are to gain experience from managing Maverick Solutions, which they can some day apply toward running other businesses in the future while maintaining the success of the Entrepreneurship Club.
"We don't want this to end when we leave the school, we want to pass it on so that other members of the club can gain business experience as well," Balow said.
They agreed they would like to do something for the students as well.
"We're tailoring this to be what the students want, and we're hoping we can give and be the resources they're looking for," Lake said.
Scott Johnson, Dean of the College of Business, attended the grand opening and expressed his excitement for the new store.
"We've been trying to start something like this for a long time, but we couldn't find the most important thing: space. Now we finally have some, and a few students took the initiative to actually do something with it. We're very proud of them," he said.
While the store currently has only a few different t-shirts, it is holding a contest to come up with more. Anyone interested can pick up an entry form in Morris Hall 150. Prizes offered for winning designs include free Dino's Pizza and Tav on the Ave gift certificates.
Anyone interested in starting their own business is invited to the Entrepreneurship Club, which meets at 5 p.m. Thursdays in MH 102.
Dannielle Higginbotham is a Reporter staff writer
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