RADFORD – With $50 in hand for start-up costs, 25 Radford University students recently set out to execute a business venture. The result was a memorable experience for students designed to enhance the use of their creativity to launch entrepreneurial endeavors.

The project was a component of RU’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation class, which is part of a non-business entrepreneurship minor that provides students with the complementary skill sets needed to effectively create and manage business opportunities associated with their primary discipline. Designed to meet one of the goals of RU’s 7-17 strategic plan -- to create a challenging and diverse academic environment that transforms students into top graduates -- the class was offered for the first time during the fall 2008 semester.

“Many of our RU students have an entrepreneurial spirit,” said Steve Childers, RU management professor and the instructor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “Some of the non-business majors are well-suited to entrepreneurship because they have a passion for their art or their profession and want to do it for a living, but they are not sure as to how that can be accomplished. That is where the entrepreneurship curriculum fits in.”

Heather Gladden, a junior art major from Millboro, created Womp Hut Plushies as her project, an initiative that was subsequently selected as the outstanding venture of the semester. Gladden began her venture by polling people online and gathering opinions of plush dolls.

“I came to the conclusion that my business edge was that each doll should be personalized to the customer's taste,” she said. “I later created a website for the Womps and pushed the website through viral advertising. I used as many free resources as possible, including Facebook, Myspace, advertisements on partner sites, and word of mouth. I even passed out flyers and placed small cards around campus.”

Gladden invested more than 54 hours in her project and sold 15 products. The result: more than $230 in profits.

“I learned that humble beginnings are not uncommon to successful business ventures,” she said. “Our $50 spending limit seemed almost impossible to meet at first. The project taught me that being smart with the business plan could lead to great success.”

Brittany Gerald, a senior finance major from Christiansburg, decided to utilize her grandmother’s apple butter recipe and sell it under the name “Mamaw’s Homemade Apple Butter.” She began by adjusting the measurements of the original recipe to create a signature product. After three attempts, Gerald finally settled on the perfect recipe and moved forward with her sales pitch, relying solely on word-of-mouth advertising.

“I asked friends, family, classmates, professors and co-workers to try my homemade apple butter. Almost everyone who tried it bought a jar. I ended up selling every jar I made, which was more than 100 jars, and had a pretty decent profit margin,” said Gerald. “One of the most important things I learned was how to sell something. I'm typically more of a shy person. I had to quickly overcome this to get people to try this apple butter.”

Childers was pleased to find that students were enthusiastic about the challenges of creating a business, despite the amount of time it required of them.

“Students indicated that, though they were working very hard, they had been enjoying it and felt that no changes to the requirements were needed,” he said. “They really seemed to have loved the subject matter and the experiences.”

RU’s entrepreneurship minor is offered through the university’s department of management, which is housed within RU’s College of Business and Economics. To learn more, visit http://cobe-web.asp.radford.edu/.