The third annual H-E-B Day at Mays Business School featured more than a dozen H-E-B executives, including presidents, vice presidents, and directors. They addressed more than 2,300 students in 20 classes from agribusiness to accounting, giving practical lessons on topics such as assortment, marketing and promotions, and innovation.
Rising from the economic ashes as the holiday season approaches, store owners are realizing that the retail landscape has changed dramatically. New tactics are needed to woo customers who don’t shop the same way as they did before the recession.
The 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world will be recognized Nov. 6 at the 5th Annual Aggie 100 program, sponsored by Mays Business School’s Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M University.
An innovative course on entrepreneurship specially designed for disabled veterans wounded since 2001 and made possible by generous donors made an impact on 14 would-be business owners. This is the second year that the program was offered at Mays, one of a five-school national consortium.
The Center for Retailing Studies at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University will host its annual Retailing Summit in Dallas, Texas, October 1-2. The event will be held at the newly remodeled Westin Galleria Hotel and is expected to draw 250 retailing executives from the nation’s largest chains, such as Ashley Furniture, Kroger, Walgreens, Harley-Davidson, Sewell Automotive and Zale Corporation.
A great education can only get a young person so far, thought Lashanta Green ’09 after talking with her classmates at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School. For an education to be valuable, coupled with all that knowledge must be direction, some plan for the facts to be applied. “A lot of college seniors don’t know what they want to do after graduation, and that’s disturbing to me,” Green said.
According to Richard Lester, clinical associate professor and executive director of the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship (CNVE) at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, the shifting economic environment means the timing couldn’t be better for a new venture.
For those in the luxury retail business, the day-to-day demands of the job are far from luxurious. From analyzing sales spreadsheets to weighing store assortment needs against budgets, it’s a challenging position with fierce competition, requiring much more than a simple passion for the product.
Entrepreneur Dr. Nancy Chang says she never considered failure to be a possibility when she leveraged all she had to launch her own pharmaceutical company, Tanox, Inc., in 1986. Though it wasn’t until 2003 that the drug she set out to produce was approved by the FDA and a few years later before it found commercial success, Chang says she was never afraid of failure during the long wait.
When you think of buying office supplies, what comes to mind? Bob Thacker hopes it’s dancing elves, giant rubber band balls, and a penny tray the size of a swimming pool. Thacker, the senior vice president of marketing and advertising at OfficeMax, says that when it comes to building a brand, if you don’t have big bucks, you’d better have big ideas.
