Special Award for Vlerick students in European Business Plan Competition

18 Jun 2007

Five MBA students represented Vlerick at the European Business Plan Competition hosted by SDA Bocconi in Milan this year. The selected team won the Special Award, in recognition of a very good business plan in terms of structure, presentation and content.

Mami Iwati, Markus Aspegren, Armand Brand, Rui Chendo and Jon McCarry came up with the idea to sell still water from the pristine Arctic region of Northern Sweden to consumers in Hong Kong, where the market in premium bottled water is underdeveloped. They would enter the market by primarily targeting five star hotels.

"It was a very good experience allowing us to get further input from the other teams and the members of the jury on what makes a good business plan," say the MBA-students. "We were told the Special Award was a significant achievement for an idea based almost exclusively on marketing and with little prospect for protection via patents."

Most of the competitors from other business schools were in a much later stage of development (running the company) and a couple already enjoyed patent protection.

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