Graduate Students Take Top Prize at Louisville Business Plan Competition

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The SpatiaLink Solutions team poses with its $15,000 grand prize.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A group of five Walton College graduate students earned top prize at the Brown-Forman Cardinal Challenge at the University of Louisville. Their business plan for SpatiaLink Solutions, a company rooted in supply chain management, reinvents retailers’ shelf planning process to insure that customers find the products they want, when they want them —thus limiting lost sales for the store.

“Retail shelf out-of-stock is costing product manufacturers an estimated $98 billion annually in lost sales,” said John Miller, chief financial officer of SpatiaLink. “Our trade-secret algorithms optimize product assortment to maximize retail sales and market share for product manufacturers.”

SpatiaLink was one of 12 teams competing at the Cardinal Challenge. They met teams from the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oregon and the University of Illinois at Chicago in the final round. Each team was given 15 minutes to present its plan to a panel of judges made up of venture capitalists, angel investors and successful entrepreneurs.

“The best way to truly evaluate your potential as a successful venture is to pitch your idea to seasoned investors and industry veterans,” Miller said. “These investors are very experienced and can quickly bring any weaknesses in your pan to the surface.”

For their victory, the SpatiaLink team was awarded a $15,000 check and an automatic berth in the Venture Lab Investment Competition in Austin, Texas, — the Super Bowl of business plan competitions. Team members also plan to attend four other competitions this semester.

The team was mentored by Carol Reeves, who is associate vice provost for entrepreneurship and a professor in the department of management at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Over the years, Reeves has advised 14 national first-place-winning Walton College teams, accounting for more than $1.25 million in cash prizes since 2002.

“The University of Arkansas is becoming recognized internationally for the quality of our student teams and their subsequent start-up success; they have elevated the stature of the entire university,” Reeves said. “The students at the University of Arkansas have competed with and beaten teams from the best universities in the world. The entire state should be proud of how well they represent us.”

The five Walton College students who make up the SpatiaLink team are:

• Aaron Huffaker, chief executive officer

• Steve Fortner, chief product officer

• Bethany Haefner, chief business development officer

• Nate Allen, chief technology officer

• John Miller, chief financial officer