Job Title:                     Marketing Liaison

Department:             Marketing

Reports to:                  President

Position Summary

Assist the President in the development of market strategies to favorably position Thoro in the marketplace.  Create and implement marketing solutions.

Consistently and efficiently provide quality information per procedures in compliance to ISO 9001:2000 standards.

Responsibilities

Increase brand recognition and establish Thoro as a recognized leader in the industry in terms of sustainability and diversity, as well as the folding carton manufacturer of choice for high-end, high-quality products.

Look for up-sale opportunities, meeting future customer needs, identifying current customer needs and priorities, then integrating the recommendations into marketing tools and presentations.

Take independent initiative to market company services.

Develop strategic plan for servicing current customers and the development of customers and new markets.

Coordinate the creation and production of sales and marketing materials from conception through distribution meeting all necessary deadlines.

Develop and make oral and written presentations to internal/external customers.

Support large customer bid package responses.

Follow up Customer Visits with a letter from the President.

Work with the Sales Manager to assign sales territory/customer prospects to Sales Representatives.

Maintain Thoro’s offsite “Walking Tour” presentations to be current and relevant, as well as Thoro’s Plant Walking Tour.

Obtain bids and act as liaison with vendors in such areas as delivering marketing material, scheduling proofs, and meetings.

Track, collate, and maintain inventory of marketing materials; have marketing materials separated by industry and ready for sales usage.

Create and place Thoro advertising in leading trade media consistent with direction and goals of the company staying within budget.

Utilize social media to promote Thoro’s abilities, vision, environmental commitments, and community contributions.

Manage social networking for the Present.

Coordinate the assembly and distribution of Thoro’s promos.

Coordinate trade show exhibits, promotions, packaging, shipping, schedule staff travel, and (as necessary) travel to and participate in the trade shows from set-up through tear-down.

Attend conferences such as PPC, PIASC, Brand Protection, etc.

Maintain and update all Customer Display Cabinets.

Maintain website content updates.

Keep information current on supplier diversity web portals.

Research prospective and existing customer backgrounds, news, websites, etc. upon request and as needed; and gather any competitive analysis data to assist in customer acquisition and retention.

Administer Thoro’s certification programs and environmental Chain of Custody submissions (artwork and data); such as FSC, SFI, WBENC, SGP, etc.

Maintain a current customer/prospect database and generate internal database information, such as lists and counts for direct marketing projects.

Assist in maintaining Thoro’s Lean and Green Wall of Fame

Assist in maintaining and updating Thoro’s “on hold” telephone recordings.

Help organize and prepare for involvement in community organizations and events such as: school tours, the TICCIT program, donations, etc.

Provide clerical support to sales department and other departments (i.e. letters and forms that need to be created or designed).

Provide support to the President as required.

Essential Job Functions

Ability to properly construct a grammatically correct letter.

Communicate clearly and concisely with respect, to all Thoro Packaging’s personnel at all levels in addition to customers and suppliers.

Consistently make decisions demonstrating regard for our customer.

Initiates involvement in creative solutions and implements improvements to team quality processes.

Learn and follow all safety rules.

Distinguish colors accurately and consistently.

Ability to stand/sit/bend/walk and manual dexterity for duration of work period.

Moderate lifting up to 35 lbs. as necessary to perform sales and marketing functions.

Ability to work in a high stress environment to meet customer delivery dates.

These Essential Job Functions are not intended, and should not be construed, to be all-inclusive lists of responsibilities, skills, efforts or working conditions associated with this job.  While these Essential Job Functions are intended to be an accurate reflection of the job requirements, management reserves the right to modify, add or remove duties from particular jobs and to assign other duties as necessary.

If you are interested in this job please contact:

On Saturday April 28th Chapman University hosted the 1st annual California Dreamin’ Business Plan Competition. Students from 17 universities participated for prize money totaling $100,000. The competing schools included Chapman, UCLA, CalTech, USC, UC Irvine, Claremont McKenna, Loyola Marymount University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, U of Utah, U of Houston, U of Hawaii, Oklahoma State University, Brigham Young University, University of Arizona, Baylor University, and University of Oklahoma. This was an impressive group to say the least.

After placing 2nd in the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship business plan competition, my company, Astral Infiniti and our solar powered unmanned airplane, was chosen to represent Fullerton in the competition. I had approximately a week to prepare full pro-forma financial statements, rework my presentation, and prepare my speech for the regional competition. Looking back that wasn’t a lot of time, but the idea of winning the 1st place prize of $50,000 was a powerful motivator.

On Friday April 27th, all of the participants gathered at a private residence in Newport Beach for the welcoming reception. It was an opportunity to meet many successful entrepreneurs as well as the other teams in the competition. The view overlooking the Pacific Ocean was a great setting to kick off the competition.

The next morning, my father and I arrived at Chapman around 8:30 am. The 17 schools were divided into 4 pools. There would be a winner coming out of each pool, plus a wild card. So there would be 5 finalists in all. My pool consisted of Cal Tech, Berkley, Chapman, and Oklahoma. After seeing my grouping I figured, if I’m going to win this thing I’m going to have to earn it. I was slated to present at 10:30 am, the 3rd school of 5.

After going through one last rehearsal and making some last minute adjustments to the presentation, we were called in to present. I delivered the presentation we put together, answered the judges’ questions, and felt good leaving the room. I knew I was up against some formidable competition so I really had no idea whether or not it would be good enough to advance. The good news was that we only had to wait 2½ hours to find out.

At 1:30 pm after all the teams had presented and we had all eaten lunch, the finalists were finally announced. Berkeley advanced from my pool. I’d like to say I was disappointed not hear my name called, but I wasn’t. I felt like I executed the plan we put together and if I wasn’t chosen then there wasn’t anything more I could have done. My new friends from the University of Utah did advance and I hope they won. We didn’t stick around to find out, though. We were exhausted.

It was a really fun time and an incredible learning experience. I met some really great people and got to work on this project with three men that I have a great deal of respect for: Fullerton faculty members John Bradley Jackson & Randy Hoffman, and of course my father Kent Decker who designed the plane. Thank you to all that helped me with this project. At the end of the day, the best thing about entrepreneurship is that you can never lose, you can only be temporarily delayed……………

Daniel Decker
Astral Infiniti, LLC
CSUF MBA Candidate 2012

Longtime friend of CSUF Entrepreneurship, Leardon Solutions CEO Joe Donoghue, suggests that we check out a live web TV show called “Patents and Prototypes” which will be broadcast at 6:30pm on Tuesday May 1.

The show will address the important aspects of patenting and prototyping your product idea. If interested, please click here.

And, you may want to check out the website at www.patents-and-prototypes.com

John Bradley Jackson
Director, Center for Entrepreneurship
jjackson@fulleton.edu

On YesYous.com college students have the ability to upload their projects, which can be almost anything, and then their fellow students have the chance to vote on their favorite project. At the end of the time period the three projects with the most votes win some prize money ($1,000 to first, $500 for second, $250 for third). CSUF is currently having a competition so you can see what this is all about.

From looking at all of these projects I can see that many of them are well underway. For example, the CSUF Formula SAE 2012 team is nearly finished. What that team has done so far is build a small race car for another competition that they enter every year. Mind you, this is not a toy, it’s a real race car that can fit an actual person in it and be driven around. I don’t think it’s street legal, it could be, but that isn’t the point. They have created a car and that is a pretty cool project. Not surprisingly, that project is in the lead as of the writing of this post.

Overall, it looks like the site is more about sharing than about the competitions. According to the founder:

Yesyous.com is a professional network for people to list their education, work, accomplishments, degrees, projects, and articles. Through Yesyous a lot of people will get the opportunity to show the whole world their value through their projects, articles, certificates, and awards.

Some of our creative featuress are:

1- Projects for people to list all their projects. Each project consist of ( details, pictures, videos, and PDF files) In this tab you upload everything you worked on [ for example your senior design lets say it is a Robot so you create a project called robot and you add pictures of the robot, videos about it, and PDF blue prints of the robot, and a whole description of the robot ]. this way companies can approach and hire people based on their work instead of the resume only

2- Education connections, this feature is for professors to add their students to keep track of their projects, accomplishments, articles, certificates, and awards even after their graduation. The professors will be always proud of their students and will be looking forward to see their accomplishments

3- Articles: This tab is to add all the articles that you are included in [ for example i had an interview in LA times magazine i copy the URL link and paste it in Articles tab ] This way people will be able to read all my recent news and keep track of it]

4- Certificates & Awards. A lot of people get a lot of those but they keep it at their home or office which make it so hard to see. Now people can scan it and let the whole world see their accomplishments.

It’s an interesting site and, as you can tell, there’s a lot more to it than is contained in this post. Basically, the main power I see in this site is that it can bring together people who like to create things. There is a definite networking aspect to this site and if you are able to make some new contacts than it is worth the effort.

And don’t forget to vote for your favorite CSUF project either!

The Fullerton Chamber will be presenting a program on Exports at the Fullerton Chamber on Friday, April 27 at 8:30 a.m. Students who may be interested in exploring this as part of a business venture are welcome to attend. Please have them RSVP Erin Haselton at ehaselton@fullertonchamber.com.

Here is some information on the program:

Presented by Jay Shaw, Export Experts.

· Discuss best practices
· Understand how to properly fill out a Certificate of Origin
· Learn how to do business overseas

Export Experts will offer this informative workshop for local businesses regarding the opportunities available in International Trade, both in exporting, importing, re-exporting, and more.

President and CEO Jay Shaw will discuss the “best practices” in regard to numerous government bureaus, agencies and departments with oversight authority.

These oversights can impact small businesses in Fullerton. Shaw will explain how small businesses might be at risk due to oversights, even if a local business does not claim to allow or make international shipments.

John Bradley Jackson
Director, Center for Entrepreneurship
jjackson@fulleton.edu

Even though the 2012 Business Plan Competition is now over I think it is important for you to know about the second place finisher, Astral Infiniti, LLC. Here’s some information about this impressive startup:

Astral Infiniti, LLC was founded in response to the growing demand for clean, renewable energy products due to rising fuel costs. Their first product is Solar Deck 24-7, a solar powered unmanned air vehicle (UAV) designed to fly for an indefinite period of time. Operating at altitudes above commercial airliners, Solar Deck 24-7 essentially acts as a satellite without requiring a launch into orbit like traditional satellites. The vehicle requires no toxic fuel, no re-entry burn and introduces no orbital waste compared to traditional satellites. It provides continuous surveillance beyond traditional fuel burning vehicles and at a fraction of the cost.

Solar Deck 24-7 can replace traditional fuel burning vehicles that currently perform tasks such as: Surveillance for military & civil purposes, news & traffic monitoring, scientific research, and environmental data collection. With that in mind their target customers are the U.S. Military, NASA, and Telecommunications companies. The UAV market is projected to double over the next decade growing from $4.9 billion to $11.5 billion annually.

The strategy of a long life, high altitude UAV design is to utilize an energy storage device that provides a high specific energy (energy per unit of weight), but also converts stored energy efficiently to a usable form. The challenge then is to integrate these two characteristics in a way that will realize the optimum performance of the UAV.

The patented Solar Deck 24-7 design does just that by incorporating flywheel technology. It provides a distinct competitive advantage over the competition, which use fuel cells, lithium-ion or lithium-sulfur batteries as storage devices. Astral Infiniti has developed a conceptual design and performance model of the vehicle that shows feasibility. The approach can continuously carry a 300 watt, 40 pound payload over a wide range of latitudes between the U.S borders.

Astral Infiniti’s competitive advantage is expertise in the industry as well as the patent on Solar Deck 24-7’s design. The barrier to entry into the aerospace industry is the amount of initial capital required to build a prototype and bring the UAV to market. They are aware of this challenge and are actively seeking investment capital. Once acquired, the combination of their industry experience and the investment capital makes the profit potential of Astral Infiniti astronomical. A typical government contract is either fixed price or cost plus fixed fee. Fixed price contracts typically allow 15% to 25% profit margin while cost plus contracts allow 6% to 10% profit margin.

D. Kent Decker has extensive experience in marketing technology to the NASA and military communities and has an established network of contacts within the target market. On top of that, he has successfully written proposals for and managed numerous government contracts.

CSUF student Daniel Decker is in his final year of the MBA program here at CSUF, with a concentration in management. Professionally, he has 5+ years of experience in business development and direct sales. They strongly believe that their unique combination of experience, capabilities, and skills will allow them to successfully convey the incredible market potential that Solar Deck 24-7 represents.

Even though Tank Skinz ended up winning this competition I have a feeling that Astral Infiniti will be alright.

by: Atul Teckchandani

Years ago, the most successful firms were vertically integrated. If you go way back – to the 1930s – there was Ford’s River Rouge plant, which made everything that went into the automobiles it ultimately manufactured. The plant had a steel furnace, a tool and die plant, a tire-making facility, and a paper mill. It even had its own power plant and railroad. Even back in the 1980s, many technology firms such as Apple and HP did not just design personal computers, they also manufactured them.

Over time, this strategy has given way to one that emphasizes keeping your core competencies in house and outsourcing the rest. A core competency is something that a business sees as being central to its success. Prahalad and Hamel (Harvard Business Review, 1990) say that a core competency can be identified using the following three criteria:

1. It provides access to a wide variety of markets.
2. It significantly affects the perceived customer benefits of the final product or service.
3. It should be difficult for others to imitate.

The article cites the example of Honda, whose core competency is its expertise in building engines. This fits all three of the criteria. First, this expertise has allowed them to build lawn mowers and motorcycles in addition to automobiles. Second, many consumers purchased Hondas because of its reliable and fuel efficient engines. Third, engines are arguably the most critical and complex components in automobiles and any advances in engine technology are not easy to imitate.

As companies have focused on their core competencies, they have become less vertically integrated. It no longer makes sense for Apple and HP to manufacture their electronic gadgets. Not only is manufacturing not one of their core competencies, there are other companies that can do it much better. Analogously, many companies no longer manage their own information technology resources – instead they hire a firm like IBM to do it for them.

For a firm, the consequences of deviating too far from its core competencies can be disastrous, if not fatal. For example, Cisco went on a spending spree in the last decade, spending billions buying firms such as Scientific-Atlanta (maker of the set-top boxes given to consumers by their cable providers), Linksys (maker of consumer networking equipment), and Pure Digital (maker of the Flip cameras). All of these acquisitions were intended to help Cisco get a foothold in the consumer space for network-related products. But the problem was that they did not fit with Cisco’s core competency, which is expertise in corporate networking. The result was that Cisco ended up shutting down its Flip division two years after it purchased it and its Scientific-Atlanta division has undergone many layoffs. While Cisco was once a Wall Street favorite, this strategy of acquiring firms that were only loosely connected to its core businesses was widely hammered by its investors and resulted in many profit warnings from the firm. Cisco finally relented and announced that it was going to refocus on its networking businesses.

What is interesting is that firms continue to deviate from their core competencies. Apple Computer recently acquired a firm (PA Semi) that designs processors. Since acquiring the firm in 2008, PA Semi’s processors have been designed into iPhones and iPads. But why would Apple want to get into the processor business? Many firms, such as Intel, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA specialize in making processors for many types of devices. In contrast, Apple’s core competencies have little to do with processor design. Apple is much better at building user-friendly software and aesthetically-pleasing hardware. These competencies have allowed Apple to enter the consumer electronics space, which has become a larger revenue generator than the firm’s computer business.

Another culprit is Amazon, who has been on an acquisition binge. They own numerous other e-retailers, such as zappos.com, diapers.com, drugstore.com and pets.com. They own firms that offer and distribute content, such as imdb.com and audible.com. They have also been launching their own subsidiaries, such as Amazon Local (which offers Groupon-type deals), A9 (which builds a search engine), Lab126 (which builds the Kindle) and endless.com (which is an online shoe retailer). Recently, they announced their intent to buy Kiva Systems, which makes robots that can be used to automate warehouses. Their acquisition strategy is virtually impossible to understand. Many of the online retailers they have acquired remain independent and continue to operate. Yet Amazon continues to let its own amazon.com site compete with them directly and even launches its own subsidiaries to further increase competition. The need to create another search engine seems highly questionable when consumers have few complaints with the current leaders in that space. And Amazon is definitely not in the robotics business. Many of these acquisitions seem to be of products and services that Amazon uses heavily. Kiva’s robots are used in Amazon’s warehouses. Imdb.com’s movie content is linked to amazon.com’s movie pages. But why purchase them outright rather than just purchase their products or services? More importantly, does Amazon have the ability to continue to allow these acquired firms to grow and thrive? Only time will tell. Amazon’s core competency used to be in e-commerce. But they have moved to become a content provider as well. Those are two core competencies that have little in common. Couple that with becoming a hardware provider and industrial equipment provider, and the result is significant lack of clarity as to what Amazon does well, which could be a sign of trouble ahead for the firm.

And herein lies the lesson for entrepreneurs: know what your core competencies are and focus on them. This means that a firm should have no more than a few core competencies. Build the capabilities to develop, nurture and enhance these competencies internally while outsourcing the rest. That is a business model strategy that has proven to work for all firms, big or small.

Dr. Atul Teckchandani is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton. He teaches courses in entrepreneurship, provides student advising and is involved with the Center for Entrepreneurship within Mihaylo College. He has a PhD in Business Administration (Management of Organizations) from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.

Despite the heavy rain we ended up having an extremely successful Business Plan Competition Finals! Thank you to all those that attended: the teams, CSUF students, the finalists, the families of the finalists, our prestigious panel and our sponsors. Without all of you this event could not have happened.

After all of the introductions, a raffle, some talk about the sponsors, another raffle, some information on how the presentations were going to proceed, yet another raffle, and an introduction of the panelists the presentations got under way. First up was SP ZAP, LLC, which is a technology concern. Basically, it helps businesses manage their forms more efficiently. In exchange for a yearly subscription companies will get to use their program which helps migrate information from PDFs to Sharepoint.

Then came Atral Infiniti, LLC, which is a company that has the patent for this extremely fascinating solar UAV. Their presenter said that the uses of his UAV were for surveillance, transmitting information, tracking the weather and that there were literally dozens, if not hundreds, of other applications on top of all of that. By the way, did I mention that this solar UAV could stay up in the air for months, if not years?

The final team to present was Tank Skinz. They actually have a really simple idea: create “skinz” for water heaters. Their reasoning is that water heaters are nothing more than this gigantic eyesore that mars what otherwise could have been a nice looking garage. But don’t think it’s just for guys with man caves (although they will be targeting this group with beer and sports themed skinz). Evidently, women would love to have something to cover up their water heaters too.

And then the presentations were done and, yeah, you guessed it, there were a couple more raffles while I added up the scores. While I was carrying the three a person won an Xbox360 with a couple of games and six months of Xbox Live for free. There were some other prizes but I was too caught up in my math problems to notice.

Finally, I finish and hand the scores over to John Bradley Jackson, our presenter and the Director for the Center for Entrepreneurship. In third place was SP Zap, LLC. Don’t feel bad for them because not only did they beat out dozens of competitors to make it this far they won $1,000 in cash and another $2,500 in in-kind services to help start their business.

After the applause subsided the winner was announced: Tank Skinz. As the first place winners they take home $3,000 in cash as a team and another $5,000 worth of in-kind services. Astral Infiniti, LLC took home the silver, along with $2,000 in cash and another $3,750 of in-kind services.

But before you knew it the final raffle happened. One of the members of one of our Top 7 teams, which win $500 in cash and $300 of in-kind services, won an iPad. Only after the iPad had been safely stowed away in the winner’s bag did the event start to wind down.

It was an amazing event and went fairly smooth considering the fact that this was the first time that we hosted an event of this kind. Mistakes were made, sure, but I think it was a great learning experience for everyone involved and I’m hopeful that at least a few of these teams will make a real go at starting their own businesses.

And for all the rest of you: if you are going to be attending CSUF next year start working on your business plans now because the 2nd Annual Business Plan Competition will be here quicker than you’d imagine.

Yesterday, we did a post revealing some information about one of our Business Plan Competition Finalists. And, as you may know we will be holding our first Business Plan Competition Finals this Friday, April 13th, at 1:30pm in SGMH 1502 (details). There will be some great prizes given away like an iPad and a Xbox 360. But the real draw should be the presentations that our finalists will be giving. To whet your whistle here is a sneak peak into one of our finalists’ business:

As you may know we will be holding our first Business Plan Competition Finals this Friday, April 13th, at 1:30pm in SGMH 1502 (details). There will be some great prizes given away like an iPad and a Xbox 360. But the real draw should be the presentations that our finalists will be giving. To whet your whistle here is a sneak peak into one of our finalists’ business:

For many home owners, the garage or basement is known as the “man cave” or hang out spot. Water heaters are commonly found in this area which can be a bit of an eye sore. Tank Skinz offers covers with several designs to wrap around the ugly water heater and transform the appearance of the garage. There will be many different covers available for customers to choose from such as various soda brands, beers, sports teams, and seasonal designs.Instead of looking at a rusty water heater every time someone pulls into their garage, they can imagine looking at a huge can of Coke. When the guys come over to watch Monday Night Football in the garage, a life-size can of Coors Light will be the center of attention. The option for customers to design and customize their own water heater cover will also be available at TankSkinz.com.

A patent is currently pending and this will ensure that no one can steal or mimic the idea for at least the first 20 years once the patent is approved, and will deter others from attempting to steal the idea while the patent is pending. To assure the safety of our name, Tank Skinz™ has been locally trademarked and will be nationally trademarked shortly. The domain names TankSkinz.com and TankSkinz.net are already secured.

Shawn Way, creator of Tank Skinz™ is also currently co-owner of Way Enterprises, LLC and has some experience with start-up businesses. He is a senior at Cal State Fullerton where he is majoring in Psychology and minoring in Entrepreneurship. He has been in the construction industry for six years and is very familiar with the home improvement industry.

This is one of those ideas that, when you see it, you slap yourself on the head and wonder “why didn’t I think of that?” On top of that it is a great idea and we wish him all the best during the Finals and afterwards as well.