Ellie van Gemeren was worried about one aspect of her business plan. She’s selling water bottles with labels she’s designed promoting a charity race, but producing the labels will cost more than what people will pay for the water.
“What do we do if we spend more than we bring in?” van Gemeren, a senior from Canton, asked business owners Paul Shapiro and Susan Anderson during a recent coaching session in her economics class at The Ethel Walker School in Simsbury.
Shapiro, who, with Anderson, owns vie LLC in West Simsbury, had a ready answer for how van Gemeren can raise more money for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center while sticking to her plan.
“How can we be more creative, especially when it comes to helping children fight cancer? How can we get the water donated, so we can get the margins to skyrocket?” he asked. “We can introduce you to some of our sponsors to see if they’ll donate the water. We’ll get you in front of the right people.”
With their passion for selling and their savvy business advice, Anderson and Shapiro soothed the worries of several of the 16 students in Michele Harris’ economics class during the recent, hour-long session. Through vie, which trains sales forces for companies around the nation, Shapiro and Anderson are guiding the girls toward their goal of raising $10,000 for hematology and oncology clinical trials at the hospital in Hartford. Sponsors are lined up to match what they raise, up to a total of $20,000.
The “vie for the kids business competition” began in early March when the Ethel Walker students visited the hospital to familiarize themselves with its programs. Vie then gave each of the seven groups $100 in seed money and coached them on developing business plans to raise money by May 9, when vie for the kids will hold a 5K trail run, kids fun run and an auction at the private girls’ school to benefit the hospital.
The students’ business plans are ambitious. One team has an aggressive goal of recruiting 500 runners for the race. Another is offering home, dorm room and car cleaning services for professors and students who live at Ethel Walker. Others teams are offering to babysit for professors and Ethel Walker parents in the Farmington Valley or are holding a large lacrosse jamboree for local kids.
This is the first year of the competition, which Anderson and Shapiro dreamed up after raising $50,000 last year at a silent auction to benefit the medical center. By tying the competition closely to Harris’ curriculum, they are giving the students real-world examples of business concepts the firm lives with every day — including developing a target audience, marketing messages, deploying resources efficiently, sticking to financial projections and maximizing the work of every team member, Shapiro said.
Along the way, they also hope the girls learn social responsibility.
“These are very privileged young women who will grow up to be philanthropists,’’ he said. “They are very anxious to help others.”
After working in the sales, marketing, learning and development fields, Anderson and Shapiro started vie three years ago to help clients improve the skills of their sales forces. They study what the high sales performers at a firm do and try to replicate it through training and role-playing. The firm has four clients nationally, said Shapiro, who declined to provide a revenue figure.
Shapiro raised money for a New York hospital three years ago while training for the New York City marathon, but a friend who is a pediatric oncologist at the children’s medical center in Hartford convinced him it would be better to raise money locally.
“Susan and I realized we should help make sure children with cancer have the best care possible in our own backyard,’’ Shapiro said.
Harris, the economics teacher at Ethel Walker, said at first, she was worried about how to integrate the fundraising competition into her class. But she wanted to support the cause and quickly found that the project meshed perfectly with her curriculum.
“They’re learning all of the concepts I’ve been teaching, such as human capital, labor markets, factors of productions, efficiency and entrepreneurship,’’ she said. “This is organically evolved, so we’ve had a sort of “eureka’ moment.”
During the coaching session, some of the students said they were “freaking out” about getting their businesses running or ordering promotional products such as flowers and shoelaces by race day. Others were nervous about asking merchants for food and supplies for the events they’re planning.
Melanie Welcome, a 17-year-old senior from Winsted, said plans for her business team’s lacrosse jamboree were going well, but they weren’t sure how to divide up duties at the event.
“I’m not the person who can be behind the grill to cook hot dogs and hamburgers,’’ she said. “That’s not my thing.”
Anderson advised her to determine her teammates’ strengths and weaknesses and match them to the tasks that need to be done. That’s what businesses do on the fly every day, she said.
