CoLab at Ohio U hosts StartUp Market
By: Brenna Nye, Owen McDermott
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — In celebration of Global Entrepreneurship week, Ohio University’s College of Business hosted a StartUp Market in the CoLab in Alden Library for student and local entrepreneurs to exhibit their products, goods and services.
With more than 20 vendors, the StartUp Market lasted from 3-6 p.m. and provided refreshments and great opportunities for networking and experience for all attendees.
“Organizations and institutions across the globe are celebrating entrepreneurship and small business in different ways, and this is our way of participating in that,” said Krystal Geyer, Assistant Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship. “We have people selling cupcakes, we have people doing eyelashes, selling chicken and waffles. (It) really spans the gamut.”
Some local vendors included B.B.C Chicken and Waffles, New Leaf Marketplace and SwimPrinted.
“Entrepreneurship is about fun and creating value,” Paul Benedict, the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, said. “We love showing off the really cool stuff that the students and the community are doing.”
The majority of vendors were students who were interested in showcasing what they had to offer to the public.
Chloe Good, a sophomore at Ohio University whose booth highlighted her photography services, said her experience at the event was successful.
“At first, I was a little hesitant because I don’t have anything to sell physically,” she said. “I’m just selling a service and I was really confused if people would be into that. Now that I’m sitting here, it’s worked out so far. I’ve had a couple of people come up and talk to me and ask me about headshots and stuff like that.”
Benedict believes that hosting this event holds a lot of value for students and locals interested in pursuing their entrepreneurial goals.
“I think there are lots of student entrepreneurs on campus,” he said. “There are lots of people doing interesting things that we don’t know yet. They should all come find us so that we can support them.
Benedict said the CoLab has plenty of resources.
“We’ve got coaching, we’ve got grants, there’s money,” he said. “We can support student entrepreneurs (and) what we want to do is help students that want to do interesting stuff, make an impact in the world. We want to support them and put resources behind helping them pursue what they’re passionate about.”
Following a strong turnout for the event, Benedict hopes to have more of these types of events in the future, as he believes there are no downsides to providing entrepreneurs an outlet to show off what they have to offer.