This past Spring premiered the first-ever "Sherwin-Williams Sales Competition 2020 SUNY Challenge." Co-hosted by Sherwin Williams and SUNY, any students who are enrolled in a SUNY program are eligible to enter into this competition. As an applied learning entrepreneurship competition the students can compete to win a cash grand prize while earning college credit.
In addition, the first-place finishers will be granted possession of the "traveling" trophy to be kept at the winning teams' school for the next year. Teams who wished to enter were required to have at least two students per team and have a faculty advisor to accompany them.
In round one, the student teams had to submit an expanded executive summary of what they identified to be weak points in Sherwin-Williams business model and provided a thorough overview of how to improve the process. Farmingdale put together one team of four students. As time progressed two students dropped from the team. Leaving Gary Rettig a Business Management major and Jess Re a Science Technology & Society major with a Business Management minor to enter as a team to compete this past Spring. With Dr. Heather Kirkwood as their faculty advisor, they quickly got to work.
Over a few months, Gary and Jess gathered information and started to execute their own field research. The team took it upon themself, to go to various Sherwin-Williams stores to interview the managers on what they believe the business could improve upon. This initiative really gave them an edge. They asked them questions about what tactics are currently working and what tools they may need to increase business. This gave them a genuine insight into the Sherwin-Williams business model.
One of the first things the team did was perform a SWOT analysis of Sherwin-Williams marketing campaign. This is where the team assets the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Sherwin Williams campaigns. In this review they found a few opportunities that Sherwin-Williams could capitalize on, one being their social media campaign.
As the competition developed, so did the COVID-19 outbreak. They realized it is hard for the company to maintain sales and engagement when individuals are staying at home more and more. In their expanded executive summary the team created a digital campaign to increase sales and engagement during this time. They created the "Paint at Home Challenge" where they proposed to their follower base to post about their painting experience with Sherwin-Williams products and tag the company. This would create more brand awareness and provide an activity for families stuck at home. This strategy would intern drive up sales during the shelter at home order released by Governor Cuomo. They included mock posts in their summary to provide visual examples of what the campaign could become. This was a phenomenal idea for Jess and Gary and it was not their only one.
In addition to Sherwin-Williams social media, Jess and Garry believe they can also improve upon their website design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is defined by unpaid strategies to increase your website rankings in search engines. This can be done in various ways. A few examples are having custom content on your website, gaining great reviews by your client base, and accurately matching what users search to what information you have on your website. They submitted their recommendations for Sherwin-Williams in a seven-page expanded executive summary to the panelist of judges for the competition.
While the team prepared their summary they met with Dr. Kirkwood on a regular basis. This consisted of once a week in-person meeting. In mid-march when the COVID-19 outbreak hit they moved their meeting to an online format and increased the frequency of their meeting to once a day.
The judges of the competition reviewed all submissions and only brought back seven teams to the final. Farmingdale's own Jess Re and Gary Rettig was one of the seven teams selected to continue the final phase. This phase included a fifteen-minute in-person presentation along with a ten-minute question and answer section from the judge's panel. Farmingdale State College was set to host this year's in-person competition as the Nexus Center partnered with Sherwin-Williams to host this event. Due to the outbreak, all the teams now had to prepare for the final presentation in a digital format. They converted the event to an online presentation in front of a panel of judges by using the platform Web X.
As Jess and Gary prepared for their live video presentation they had three main points they wanted to communicate to the judges about their analysis. In addition to there social media and SEO improvement the team had to communicate the budget it would require, how they would decide to implement these improvements, and a timeline they intent to roll out the changes. As they prepaid for their pitch and PowerPoint presentation they continued to meet with Dr. Kirkwood to perfect their project. On Friday, March 27th they delivered their presentation.
With minor web glitches from Web X, the team had an overall great presentation and question and answer experience. Soon after Jess and Gary were notified the has been awarded second place out of all possible teams to submit their pitches in New York. The team was awarded $2,000 and also earned 5 credit hours each for there research and work completed. Dr. Kirkwood stated how proud she is of the team and commended them for their "dedication and drive" through all the adversity they came across in this year's competition.