Last week developer Rocco Termini invited me to go along with him to Medaille College to participate in a Masters in Business Administration Program class. He wanted to share an exciting hands-on approach that the college was cultivating in order to bring new business to downtown Buffalo. The program identifies the business needs for downtown and monetizes those needs. Why? There are start-ups that are going to the banks and looking for money. Many of the start-ups don’t have the ability to conduct market studies on their own. They are time consuming and expensive. But without a market study the banks are not apt to lend money to a business. From Rocco:
“It was by total accident how this came about. One of the Medaille students was doing an MBA paper and wanted to write on the hypothetical opening of a restaurant downtown. I asked the student if it would be possible to write a market study for Get Dressed clothing… a business that had expressed an interest in opening another location. Get Dressed needed a market study to do its bank financing. A market study offers a comfort level for banks. The studies are difficult to do and can be expensive. That student wrote a plan for Get Dressed Downtown and helped to bring an established retailer to Main Street. Then I asked the students to draft a study for bringing a women's store to downtown. That store was The Jenny Shop now owned by Jen Hemmingway. The Buffalo Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation said that it was one of the better market studies that they had ever received. Normally an MBA thesis is written for a hypothetical businesses. This is different… these are actual market studies researched for downtown businesses (existing or start-ups)."
“Now I’m having the class conduct a market study for a downtown public market. I even help to arrange guest speakers. By doing this, I'm helping myself and the city at the same time. We need these studies to make downtown more successful. All banks need market studies… it's like an appraisal for them to justify loaning money for a business. Colleges in WNY already conduct these market studies for hypothetical purposes. The city has to tap into our student resources. We must encourage other colleges to follow suit with actual market studies. Most of the students already work here, so they are not planning on leaving when the course is over. Medaille has taken the time to cultivate this program and we have had great cooperation from both the school and interested entrepreneurs.”