Kent Business School undergraduate students were given the opportunity to pitch to Faversham-based business Macknade Fine foods. Student teams worked on a marketing challenge presented by the company and provided practical solutions based on research and market analysis.
Pitch It! is an initiative developed at Kent Business School whereby a company shares a real-life business challenge with student teams, under the supervision of an academic tutor. The teams research and analyse the challenge over ten weeks and pitch back innovative and practical solutions to a panel of representatives from the organisation and Kent Business School academics.
Stefano Cuomo, Managing Director of Macknade Fine Foods was highly impressed; ‘Having been invited by the Kent Business School to participate in their Pitch It! programme, we provided a real business scenario for the teams of third and fourth-year students to develop and present to us. The results far exceeded our expectations!’
‘The quality of the presentations was excellent, the delivery first class and, in many cases, the quality of the content beat commercial tenders we have previously called in’
‘The students not only provided clear solutions and strategies to deliver our aims but also made us consider how our business is viewed by an increasingly important customer base.’
‘As an experience, it was hugely valuable to have an important demographic spend time on our business issue, analyse it and provide us with relevant solutions and ultimately linking us into candidates that we hope to develop an ongoing relationship with. We returned to Macknade having thoroughly enjoyed the morning but, more importantly, with specific strategies that we will be investing more time in developing, as well recognising the need to answer some important questions that the presentations had brought to light! A priceless experience.’
This was the view echoed by student Abi Lowry, a studying Business Administration (Marketing) with a Year in Industry: ‘Pitch It! was an excellent opportunity to work for a real company and to apply the knowledge gained from four years of studying. The challenge gave us the chance to make a difference to a local company by hopefully developing new ideas which they can implement in the future. The experience was a great way to finish studying at Kent Business School.’
David Williamson, Director of External Services at Kent Business School praised the professionalism of the students and their creative approaches to the brief. Pitch It! sessions are offered free of charge to businesses and are easy to set up. Kent Business School is eager to hear from any business who could benefit from the expertise of our students. We are particularly keen to help businesses seeking to scale up their international activity post-Brexit.
Find out more about Pitch it! and get in touch with Kent Business School.