Final year students who are studying Marketing pitched their ideas to gluten and wheat-free goods company Oast to Host in Kent Business School’s latest Pitch It project.
Students were set the challenge of identifying opportunities for Oast to Host to grow their business-to-business sales.
Working in groups they researched the target market and company, developing innovative ideas and solutions and on Wednesday 8 December selected students pitched their idea to Oast to Host co-founder, Sally Black.
The business was started in response to the lack of good quality gluten-free foods. It has grown from trading at Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market and pre Brexit exported flour to Europe. They are now looking to expand their presence in the UK wholesale market.
After hearing four high-quality presentations, Sally selected one group as overall winners of the Pitch It.
She said: “I was very impressed with the students today. I hope they found it interesting looking at the free-from market and working on their wonderful proposals. It was certainly a close-run competition! I’m looking forward to going over the proposals more closely and putting together an action plan!”
Students agreed that working on real-life challenges brought an added dimension to their study and that presenting to a business was a “valuable experience.”
The Pitch It scheme has been run at Kent Business School for more than 10 years, working with scores of companies of all types, particularly SMEs.
Module convenor, Dr Dan Petrovici, said: “Working with a local SME from Kent represented a great opportunity for our students not only to further develop their employability skills but also connect with the local business community and understand how a company from our region successfully navigates throughout the challenges of the pandemic. Oast to Host offered an excellent challenge to develop a marketing communications plan with the integration of facets/aspects related to B2B and B2C marketing.”