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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Andrew Rogers' entrepreneurial career started when he sought to solve his own basic problem: How was the freshman business major at Creighton University going to get his suits to a dry cleaner?
He sensed an opportunity. Now a senior, Rogers and two business partners are spending their evenings sorting dry-cleaning orders, making deliveries and marketing their new business.
They held a grand opening last month for JayClean, a dry-cleaning service open to students, faculty and staff with drop-off and pick-up inside the Harper Center, where the Heider College of Business is housed.
Omaha World-Herald (http://bit.ly/1Gk4dqX ) reports Creighton is the sole investor, and revenue for a while will go toward repaying that investment. But Rogers has a business model he owns the rights to, and plans already in the works to market the idea to other universities.
"I'm sure there will be bumps along the way, but everything is looking really good now," Rogers said.
Rogers, who is from Sacramento, California, had no car and a busy schedule when he started his undergraduate degree at Creighton. The Creighton campus was about a mile away from the closest dry cleaner. He wondered why there wasn't a drop-off location on campus, especially considering how many fellow business students probably wore dry clean-only clothes.
Rogers brought in two fellow business students, Jonathan Kreifels and Jeffrey Altman, and they asked for a meeting with the college's dean, Anthony Hendrickson. He told them to do the market research and come up with a plan.
The students realized that running an actual dry-cleaning business, with equipment and a staffed desk, was too expensive and labor intensive. Instead they came up with an automated process: a drop-off location where customers can pay on the spot, and pick-ups in a room with lockers, with combinations issued along with the notice that an order is complete.
In between, Rogers and his partners sort inventory, check orders and work with Max I. Walker. Through a contract with the dry cleaner, Rogers said, JayClean is able to charge people the same rates the customers would pay if they took clothes to Max I. Walker.
When Hendrickson heard the plan, he said the college could fund the idea and be repaid through future revenue.
"They did all the work. It was just a matter of trying to be there and listen to them," Hendrickson said. "I'm really proud they never gave up."
Tim McMahon, an associate professor of marketing and management, served as a mentor to the team. He compared the idea to the Apple iJay store, which is completely student-run and part of a class curriculum, and held it up as an example of exactly the sort of enterprise the college hopes to encourage.
"Our philosophy is very much about practical application," McMahon said. "It's the model of the entire college."
Rogers retains ownership of the idea, but he will soon graduate. By then he hopes to have similar operations up and running at other colleges. He and his partners hope to turn management over to other students, a continuous flow of job opportunity and business experience for his fellow Creightonians.
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Information from: Omaha World-Herald, http://www.omaha.com
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