Learning by doing — SEMO students create downtown market

An outdoor market in downtown Cape Girardeau this weekend will not only provide shoppers with bargains, but it will also serve as a "learning experience" for a group of university students.

The SEMO Market is a project of an entrepreneurship class at Southeast Missouri State University in which the students have organized the market as a class project.

The market, scheduled for 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. in and around the Spanish Street parking lot just south of Independence Street, is helping students learn what it's like to organize a business venture and make a profit in the process. This will be the second of at least two downtown markets the students have hosted this semester with the first taking place March 20.

"Entrepreneurship is best taught by doing it," explained Joel Philpott, a Southeast sophomore from Collinsville, Illinois, who is majoring in finance and entrepreneurship. "We actually started a business that's letting us get our toes wet in entrepreneurship. It's awesome."

Philpott and his classmates are studying the principles of entrepreneurship under Steven Stovall, a faculty member in the university's Department of Management. Stovall and fellow management faculty member Ed Crowley, who also teaches an entrepreneurship course, challenged their students to create businesses this semester and make them profitable.

"This is kind of a pilot project," Stovall said. "The head of our department, Dr. Kevin Dickson, gave each of us $200 in seed money for our classes. The catch is, the students have to return $400, so we're competing to see who can get the most sales and the highest percent of profits."

Students in Crowley's class are making and selling stickers while Stovall's students elected to organize a market in which vendors would rent space and sell goods.

A white board of ideas

"When we started with this at the beginning of the semester, we had a whole white board filled with ideas about what we could do as a business," Philpott said. "But when we started narrowing it down, we realized how good an outdoor market could be for both students and local vendors."

Philpott and his classmates created a business model that includes a marketing team responsible for promoting the market, an operations team that lines up vendors and day-of-event activities, and a finance and accounting team that tracks the market's money flow. Philpott serves as vice president of the finance and accounting team.

The students reached out to Old Town Cape, which sponsors the downtown Riverfront Market, for permission to use the Spanish Street parking area for their project.

"Old Town Cape and Southeast Missouri State University have had a very strong, ongoing partnership and the SEMO Market was just one more way we could solidify that relationship," OTC executive director Liz Haynes said.

The SEMO Market, she said, is a good lead-in to Old Town Cape's Riverfront Market season, which starts May 1.

"When events are hosted within our downtown community, our downtown businesses benefit from increased foot traffic and sales," Haynes said.

In addition to Old Town Cape, the students have also received sponsorship support from the UPS Store, which provided a banner for the project.

The project, according to Philpott, has already been a financial success based on revenue generated at the March 20 market.

"We doubled our money and started to make a profit at the first one," he said.

'You can't teach entrepreneurship'

Stovall thinks students in the other entrepreneurship class will also turn a profit with their project, but said with a laugh their profit "will not be as much as ours, of course."

He said Saturday's market could be a sellout in terms of vendor space.

"I think as of Wednesday they had reservations for 51 of the 60 available spaces," he said, adding anyone interested in renting a space may inquire through the SEMO Market Facebook page.

In addition to Saturday's SEMO Market, Stovall said there's a possibility a third student-run market could be scheduled April 24, but that decision won't be made for several days and the date might be too close to next month's final exams.

While turning a profit is a good thing, Stovall said the most important objective is the hands-on experience the students are receiving.

"You cannot teach entrepreneurship in a classroom," he said. "It takes passion and the willingness to put in long and odd hours to make a dream come true. There's just no way you can teach that."

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