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Teaching
Setting the Foundation
Freshman move-in headaches inspire undergrads taking "Entrepreneurship" — Management 230 — to create a plan for a new business.
Sheets, towels, a fan, a clock radio, a TV. Oops, almost forgot the pillow. Back to Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Wharton undergraduate Jon Gantman doesn't like to shop. Didn't back when he was a freshman, and he doesn't now that he's a senior. So every trip back to the store ratcheted up his anxiety just a little bit more. And he was already stressed enough. He was a freshman at Wharton. It was his first week of college. And he had to furnish his room in Hill College House.
Sure, he was from nearby Penn Valley, a Philadelphia suburb, so West Philadelphia wasn't as foreign to him as it was to classmates from, say, California or abroad. But he had plenty of worries: were his classmates going to be a bunch of hypercompetitive grinds? Would his professors embarrass him in class if he didn't know the answers to their questions? Would his roommate snore? Was there a place to get a decent cheesesteak near campus?
Instead of driving to the mall, what he needed was one merchant that carried everything and could deliver it all to his room in one big box — a place that combined Amazon's Website with Target's inventory and Domino's convenience. He couldn't believe that such a merchant didn't exist — it'd be a great business, he thought. Students would love it.
Ray Temblet lived down the hall. He hailed from a little town in Louisiana called Donaldsonville that, as he says, nobody has ever heard of. He and Gantman, a fast-talking city boy, became friends early on, despite their differences. Gantman shared his idea with Temblet, who loved it.
The idea for One Stop College Shop may be rooted in Gantman's freshman year, but it didn't really coalesce until last fall when he and Temblet took the foundation undergraduate class on entrepreneurship "Entrepreneurship" — Management 230 — with Prof. Julia Prats. For the class, they teamed up with three friends — Miles Bruder, Patrick Cleary and Mark Silverstein.
Together, the five of them, all seniors, have written a business plan, which they're entering in the Wharton Business Plan Competition. Just as important, they've taken Gantman's dream and are turning it into the blueprint for an actual business. Their plan isn't just an academic exercise but, they hope, the jumping off point for a money-making venture.
The student-partners say their Entrepreneurship course, has been the key to the evolution. Gantman toyed with his idea for three years, often with Temblet's help. Only after he enrolled in the class did it really begin to take shape. He and Temblet had tried to build an independent study around writing the business plan during their junior year. But they decided the course would provide them the time and attention they they needed to launch the concept.
The class is designed to take students, step by step, through the process of writing a plan. "The class is more experiential than others I've taken at Wharton," Silverstein says. "There's a real practical focus." For example, the importance of assembling the right team and ensuring team members work effectively together are key takeaway messages. "We've learned that formation of the team is almost as important as your actual idea."
The class also has encouraged more independent thinking than others he has taken as an undergraduate, Bruder says.
One Stop College
Shop has changed thanks to the class, too.
Originally, Gantman envisioned a company that would act, in effect,
as a broker, matching students and suppliers without actually
taking possession
of inventory.
But he came to realize that that wouldn't achieve a key
part of his concept — delivering
all the goods in one box to a student's room.
What the group now envisions is a company with a Web site that would present its catalog and its own warehouse to hold the inventory. "We'd have Polo and Nautica sheets, so parents would think, ‘This is a reputable place,'" Gantman says. "But on the flip side, we'd also have the MTV-brand sheets, so the kids will be like, ‘This is cool.'"
A key to success will be persuading universities to mail One Stop's marketing pamphlets with their letters informing students of their housing assignments.
The group already has approached Penn, and administrators there have been receptive to the idea, at least in theory, Gantman says. One told him she liked it because, if it worked, the school would have to deal with fewer parcels, lessening its security worries.
Even so, the One Stop team understands that other schools may be less willing to help. After all, many universities are competitors since they sell the same sorts of goods in their bookstores. And a few universities even have similar systems in place internally, though their inventories are more limited than what the One Stop team hopes to offer, Temblet says.
Another obstacle is the buying habits of the students themselves, Bruder says. "In our market research, we're finding that a lot of kids are waiting to shop and then scrambling to find the stores that they need when they get to school. We'd have to change that, so they'd have this settled ahead of time and have the box waiting for them."
Last semester, the group's work culminated with a presentation, made by Cleary and Silverstein, to Prof. Prats and a panel of venture capitalists.
Through the presentation, the group learned that their plan wasn't as polished as they thought. The investors were "concerned about how we were going to get all the inventory and distribute it," Gantman says. "They want us to talk with suppliers and get more specific in our plan about what kinds of discounts we'd get from them and how we'd buy stuff."
Four of the five members of the team — Cleary graduated in December and will join the Marine Corps in September — are taking the follow-up course — Entrepreneurship & Venture Initiation— with an eye to polishing their plan and, they hope, winning the business plan competition.
For next year, they all have plans for jobs or further education — Gantman and Temblet are headed to Wall Street, Bruder to Capitol Hill and Silverstein to law school. But they intend to keep working on One Stop in their spare time and, they hope, eventually turning it into a real business.
That way, future generations of Wharton students won't have to hassle with Bed, Bath & Beyond.
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Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs: Programs and Courses