Tuesday, December 09, 2014YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Adults are simply children who have grown up, many of whom have kept their inner child’s curiosity and senses of fun and wonder.
With this in mind, Jim Senary’s managerial accounting class at the Valley Center of Eastern Gateway Community College offered nine recommendations on how the Oh Wow! Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology could become financially self-sustaining.
Senary gave his class an unusual final exam Monday -- to present the results of their analysis of Oh Wow!’s finances and how executive director Suzanne Barbati and her staff could develop new sources of revenue. The class seemed to pass with flying colors.
In the audience were Barbati, her staff and the president of Eastern Gateway, Laura Meeks, and two members of her cabinet, the vice president of business services, James McGrail, and the interim vice president of the Valley campus, Dante Zambrini.
The nine presenters -- Kim Speare, Paula Parkman, Vincent Luque, Sarah Bowers, Walter Raniolo, April Cook, Karla Avila, Glenn Binion, and Terrell McDowell -- reviewed the Oh Wow! finances, leaving nothing unexamined. Barbati held nothing back as she opened the museum books to them.
As would be expected, absent the generosity of donors to the nonprofit center and the memberships it sells, Oh Wow! would record a loss. Revenues from admissions and gift shop sales are insufficient to sustain its operations -- rent, utilities and marketing -- and pay salaries.
Were the students’ recommendations adopted in their entirety and were their assumptions to pan out -- two huge ifs -- the operating deficit Oh Wow! will incur this year would turn into a net profit of nearly $400,000 in 2015.
The students not only reviewed the museum financial statements, they conducted S.W.O.T. analyses of each line of business, existing and proposed. (S.W.O.T. refers to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.)
Strengths: Central location (easy access), comeback of the downtown, an improving economy, good relationships with public, private and charter schools.
Weaknesses: Available parking, no direct outreach to adults, no food service, inadequate marketing, no exhibit on the science involved in sports, need to further strengthen relationship with schools, establish relationships with children schooled at home, church youth groups and juvenile sports leagues.
Speare recommended Oh Wow! market itself more as a site to hold corporate and special events. “Walking into Oh Wow! is like walking into the Bill Nye the Science Guy set,” she said. Costs such as $35,000 in annual rent and $1,284, the monthly average for utilities, are fixed and the increased volume in admissions would more than cover the variable costs, such as copier expense and credit card processing.
Oh Wow!, Speare suggested, would make a great site for companies’ off-site meetings. After a company concluded its business, the employees would find the center “a fun place to learn science.”
Speare also recommend that Oh Wow! expand the number of science nights for adults to one a month from three a year and that dinner and refreshments be served (with a corresponding increase in admission).
Parkman, an English tutor at the Valley campus as well as an accounting student, spoke to Oh Wow! becoming a site to hold children’s birthday parties, which would involve serving food. Among the competition: Chuck E. Cheese’s, The Skate Zone on Mahoning Avenue, Sports World in Boardman, the Kalahari Water Park in Sandusky and children’s science museums in Cuyahoga County. To be profitable, Oh Wow! would have to double its 15-children per party maximum.
“One birthday party a week could significantly improve profitability,” Parkman related. “It was hard to see that at first. I told Mr. Senary I didn’t see how” before they sat down and reviewed the data.
Luque proposed off-site field trips. “You’re science on wheels,” he told Barbati, who worked closely with the students and was eager to learn their suggestions during the semester. “The challenge is marketing,” Luque continued, that is, getting the word out to charter schools, church youth programs and the pediatric wards of hospitals.
He proposed having Oh Wow! staff and volunteers visit the sites, leave solar terrariums for children to tend and provide an incentive to return the terrariums to Oh Wow! to show how well they tended them.
Raniolo discussed in-house field trips, the source of most of Oh Wow! revenues that don’t come from grants and philanthropy. The center has overlooked the science involved in sports, especially baseball and how a baseball is thrown, he said. Because baseball is played in summer, the time of year of no school field trips, Oh Wow! should market itself to Little League, he advised.
“This is a sports-driven region,” said McDowell.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Barbati responded.
Bowers spelled out how the gift shop could expand and increase its annual revenues to $43,750 in profit from $8,000 in revenues -- which would require an investment of $17,000 for merchandise and involve selling that merchandise both on premises and online.
Cook, the mother of a 6-year- and a 7-year-old, proposed installing vending machines, and coin-operated science exhibits and lockers. “You could increase your cash flow just by adding a few [science-related] vending machines,” she said. The center has room to install them, she said.
“I appreciate that you didn’t [propose] food vending machines,” Barbati responded with a smile.
Avila recommended that Oh Wow! focus more on adult education and hold an annual mythology night where the ancients attributed to their deities what science today explains by natural forces. She also proposed a CSI Youngstown night in partnership with the Youngstown Police Department and a semi-annual technology night in partnership with the Geek Squad at Best Buy.
If adults are persuaded to see Oh Wow! as a meeting site, the class agreed, they’ll want to eat or drink afterward. To that end, Binion visited the owner or proprietor of every restaurant and bar in the downtown. Five agreed to offer discounts to those who could show they had just come from the museum: Martini Brothers Burger Bar, Joe Maxx Coffee Co., Avalon Downtown, O’Donold’s and V2 Wine Bar and Trattoria. He distributed sample discount cards that expire June 30.
As Barbati noted, she has begun some of the proposals the students made. Already she and her staff are working to effect those that would have the museum incur minimal expense. “We’ve already implemented some of your recommendations,” she said as the presentation wound up.
What his students accomplished, Senary said, is the type of analysis a professional consulting firm such as KMPG or McKinsey would produce. “A major shortfall,” he allowed, “was the [students’] inability to conduct surveys. They used [Oh Wow!’s] money very efficiently. All of their suggestions are business-driven.”
During the 15-week semester, they meet four hours in class each week and additional hours outside the classroom reviewing and analyzing the data.
Meeks congratulated the class on their diligence, persistence and professionalism. Those who pursue accounting as a career after this semester or go on to study accounting at Youngstown State or Kent State University, she told them, will find that their efforts and Senary have prepared them well.
Pictured: From left are Eastern Gateway accounting students Glenn Binion, Sarah Bowers, Kim Speare, Karla Avila, their professor Jim Senary, Paula Parkman, Terrell McDowell and Vincent Luque.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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