Patch Princess
Growth and Scale Consultant
January 2024 - March 2024
Project Overview
During my Master's program at LMU, I had the opportunity to participate in the IDEAcorps MBA Consulting Challenge. This challenge gives students the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to help small and/or early stage businesses averaging $250,000 in revenue to develop a robust scale-up strategy.
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For the competition, we were paired with New Orleans-based entrepreneur Janice Meredith. Janice Meredith's business, Patch Princess, specializes in customized bling patches and transfers.
Process and Strategy
Our strategy was centered around aiding Janice in achieving her goal of entering retail markets, and placing her products in stores like Hobby Lobby, Joann's, and Michael's. As part of this process, we rebuilt financial statements, did a deep dive into customer data, revised the company website, created a brand book for marketing, programmed an SQL database search tool, created a social media and marketing campaign, and conducted due diligence on manufacturing equipment. This led us to create our three part scale strategy: define, fortify, scale. This strategy allowed us to streamline crucial business process, strengthen them in preparation for growth, and work to grow her current infrastructure and revenue to effectively scale.
Results
After several months of working closely with Janice, our team had the opportunity to present our scale strategy at Loyola University in New Orleans, where we placed first in the National Competition. Not only was Janice provided a strategy that would significantly increase her production capacity and sales growth, but she also received a $20,000 prize for our win.
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Working with Janice, and engaging in strategy and problem-solving ultimately grew my passion for working with founders to grow and scale their business.