University Advancement

Public Relations and Strategic Communications

NEWS RELEASE

CSUN’s Wells Fargo Center Offers Local Businesses
Plans for Success, Students Rare Real-World Training

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., July 13, 2007) — Putting together a marketing plan, business plan or even coming up with advertising ideas can overwhelm a small business owner already juggling too many balls. At the same time, many university business students would jump at an opportunity to apply key concepts they learn in the classroom to real-world situations.

Enter Cal State Northridge’s Wells Fargo Center for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, which for more than 30 years has offered free consulting services—from business and marketing plans to the development of commercial graphic designs and commercial television advertisements—to local businesses, while giving Northridge students the hands-on training that will make them invaluable employees, or confident entrepreneurs, in the future.

"It is very important for students to apply the theories and abstract concepts we teach them in the classroom," said marketing professor Franck Vigneron, director of the Wells Fargo Center. "The center plays the dual role of providing hands-on learning for our students while offering a valuable service to the local business community."

The center started more than 30 years ago as the Small Business Institute in CSUN’s College of Business and Economics as a way of providing some support to small business owners in the San Fernando Valley who would often call the college, looking for advice.

The response from the local business community has been positive. In the past five years alone, more than 100 businesses have benefited from consulting services undertaken by student teams with the guidance of faculty members. In 2003, the institute was renamed the Wells Fargo Center for Small Business and Entrepreneurship after an endowment from Wells Fargo Bank.

Accessing the center’s consulting service is fairly simple. A potential client contacts the center, detailing the services he or she would like. Vigneron and his colleagues in the College of Business and Economics consider the request and match the client with a professor and team of students whose classroom curriculum complements the business owner’s particular needs. Clients and students then meet throughout the academic semester. Each case study culminates in a useable report and presentation at the semester’s end.

Vigneron said performing the case studies gives students experience that will help them prepare for careers as entrepreneurs, small business owners and consultants. Clients get professional plans that they can take to their businesses and implement. Recent clients have included J.D. Power and Associates, the city and county of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce, Fox and 1-800-Dentist.

"Many clients, impressed with our services, are repeat customers," Vigneron observed.

J.D. Power and Associates, the internationally recognized automotive marketing information firm, has used the center more than once. Jessica Migdol, manager of business development for the company, said she and her colleagues have found the work by the CSUN students to be professional, timely and informed. Most recently, CSUN students analyzed the effectiveness of the company’s Web site and its home page.

Migdol and her colleagues were so impressed with the students’ presentation that they had the students give it directly to J.D. Powers, founder and president of the company, and some of his managers. They, in turn, invited the students to make their report to the company’s board of directors. The company eventually hired at least one of the students involved in preparing the case study.

"It’s an incredible experience," said recent grad Acacia Thornton, 24, about her work on behalf of CSUN’s Michael D. Eisner College of Education. "I learned so much more doing this than I could just in a classroom."

Thornton and her team took top honors at the center’s end-of-the-year luncheon in May. The event not only celebrated the student teams’ accomplishments during the past year, but also featured a "fast-pitch competition" in which the top teams were given seconds to pitch a business idea to potential venture capitalists. The luncheon’s audience served as judges and included several venture capitalists and other investors.

Vigneron said the center plans to continue growing.

"Our long term goal is to increase the number of student projects to 15 per year," he said. "By enhancing the success and performance of local businesses, we help strengthen this community."

For more information about CSUN’s Wells Fargo Center for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, visit its Web site www.wfcsbe.org or e-mail Vigneron at franck.vigneron@csun.edu.