Phoenix Challenge Foundation announces college ‘problem’ for 2009 competition

The second annual Phoenix Challenge College Competition to be held in conjunction with the 2009 FFTA Annual Forum at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, Orlando, Florida May 3-6, 2009 has unveiled its ‘problem’ for this year.

The college competition is a school year long event in which an industry challenge is presented to the students and requires both market and manufacturing research. Students then present to a panel of industry judges which grade them in four different categories: research, concept, graphics and execution.

For the 2008-2009 school year, the problem is:

A distributor of supplies and consumable food items for use and /or sale in college campus coffee shops wishes to enhance their competitive advantage. They want to explore the feasibility of offering short run, custom branded products which offer enhanced competitive advantage over competitors' products, while still allowing the products / packaging to be branded for the particular college campus.

This distributor issues a request for proposals to narrow web flexo convertors, asking them to propose the re-design and/or re-packaging of one or two different flexographic, narrow web printed and converted products typically found in a campus coffee shop. Proposals are expected to deliver enhanced sustainability, increased functionality, and/or improved marketing appeal.

The distributor is issuing the RFP for non-pressure sensitive, flexo narrow web printed products only. No proposals for pressure sensitive labels will be accepted.

The PC College Problem committee was lead by Mark Rankin from University of Central Missouri and included Michelle Surerus, Appalachian State University; Zachery Blackburn, Central Piedmont Community College; Gary Potter, West Virginia University Institute of Technology; Dean Gilbert, North Carolina A&T State University; Jim Lentz, Pennsylvania College of Technology; Doug Younger, Pittsburg State University and Ian Baitz, Ryerson University.