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Sunday, Sep 26, 2010George Vicente of Mesa Safe’s E2B Journey
Posted by dgore
FEATURES
E2B Professor Nelson Granados (left) and Mesa Safe president George Vicente
Enterprising MBA student consultants help meet corporate challenges
George Vicente, president of Mesa Safe and securitybase.com, was at an entrepreneurial crossroads in 2005. Revenues at his California commercial-grade security product company were up to $1.5 million, with sales coming exclusively from its e-commerce website. There was promising opportunity to expand distribution through the retail channel, but that realization was also dawning on the company’s biggest competitors. Vicente needed to gain insight – fast – into how the retail channel could help his company grow sales with small businesses.
He turned to the consultants in the Graziadio School’s Education-to-Business (E2B) program at Pepperdine University.
His company was carefully selected from a score of program applicants and he and his executives were aligned with a faculty member and graduate marketing class. The faculty member and MBA students – all with rich marketing backgrounds and work experiences – collaborated over 14 weeks to craft strategies for the company to expand distribution and grow market share.
“They presented some creative, new ideas that we implemented, and that really made a difference, including different distribution methods and alternative ways to approach buyers,” Vicente says. “Our team was able to take those recommendations and, using our years of security knowledge, mold them into targeted programs,” he says.
Those recommendations underpinned Vicente’s presentations to Big Box retailers Sam’s Club and Costco, where his products are now sold.
By 2009, the company had moved from a 5,000-square-foot facility to a 50,000-square-foot facility and was earning annual revenues of $5 million. Increased demand meant the company was quickly outgrowing its office and warehouse space. It was time to scale the operation, so Vicente applied to the E2B program for more help.
“The timing to work with the E2B program again couldn’t have been better,” he says, estimating the potential growth of his business to be over $31 million. “I wanted to get insight and recommendations in balancing investments in technology and additional personnel.”
Teams in a graduate class in contemporary issues in business and management studied the company, leveraging their skills in economics, finance and organizational behavior. The resulting analysis of the company’s business from an operational, organizational, market and financial perspective netted Vicente valuable recommendations – among them investing in a robust operating/order management system, and reorganizing the management structure to include department heads.
“Each department now runs more independently from upper management, and takes ownership for their individual area,” he says. Well on the way to making his $31 million goal, Vicente over again working with an E2B team over the summer to identify areas of the business that could benefit from technological improvements.
“It’s gratifying to see this intellectual and rigorous program deliver critical solutions for corporations like Mesa Safe,” says Doreen Shanahan, director of the E2B program, whose program has produced $7.5 million in business consulting for companies across the nation over the last eight years. By the end of the 2011 academic year, E2B student consultants will have completed over 200 projects with companies like Starbucks, Experion and Walt Disney Co., as well as with smaller, local companies.
Started in 2003, the E2B program was a faculty-pioneered project which has grown from a two-class pilot into a major learning component that completes 45 business consulting projects annually in four different discipline areas. And while the program is in high demand with business and industry, companies must apply and be selected to participate. For every 10 companies that apply to gain access to the student consultants, only one is selected and aligned with a faculty member and class best qualified to meet the distinctive needs of the company challenge.
Vicente sees the program as an important business resource that has multiple benefits. “This is a great program for the students as well as for businesses,” he says. “The students get to apply what they learn at the university and work with company executives that want insight and fresh ideas.”
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