Description of the Company:
At EMB Designs, a complete customer embroidered apparel supplier, works to make businesses look great. Through virtual catalogs, factory direct pricing, and digitizing capabilities, EMB Designs helps businesses make apparel selections for their image and budget. 

Company’s Business Problem:
EMB Designs wished to strengthen its Business Plan in order for the overall ability, quality, and potential for growth of the company to be conveyed to potential investors. 

How the student contributed:
The students identified the strengths and improvement opportunities for EMB Designs.  One group followed by providing a competitive intelligence analysis on a leader in EMB Designs' industry that included supplier relations, business principles, and other areas of interest to EMB Designs. Another group followed up with analyses on Operations, Systems, and Procedures for the Business Plan. This included suggestions for increase efficiency and quality while managing the costs of production.

Link to company’s website: http://www.companycasuals.com/embdesigns/start.jsp

“The student’s thorough work helped to refine EMB Designs in many aspects.  Working with the MBA students was a great opportunity for the company to take a good look at itself and how it was doing business.”
            Michelle Ebbing, VP of Sales and Marketing 

“Working with a company separate from the college and textbook cases, gave our group an opportunity to gain real world experience, observe the actual decisions and risks a small business owner faces, and have the reward of feeling it helped someone in the community”
              Jill Steinbrunner

“The project forced me to look at “the big picture” and think about where the company would want to go in 5 years rather than just getting through the next couple of days or months. It also helped me to understand how important the complete planning process is to develop a strong foundation from which a company can grow and develop.”
              Angela Gaier
 

Competitive Intelligence Team: Denise Eilerman, Cindy Holtzapple, Jill Steinbrunner

Operations and Systems Team: Angela Gaier, Brenda Schwieterman, Mary Walter