Another Mt. A entrepreneurship class creates a local business
A Mount Allison commerce class is opening up a bowling alley on Bridge Street called the Strike Club. The alley is being opened by Dr. Nauman Farooqi’s experiential learning entrepreneurship course, which consists of 15 students.
Savannah Forsey is a fifth-year commerce and psychology student who is in the class. Part of the class involved “building what our company structure was going to be,” explained Forsey, who is the president of the company that started the business. The project was funded by students in the class. Each student is a shareholder of the company, and funded $150 to the project. “After that we formed a loan pitch team and pitched to a committee formed through Mount Allison. They basically have a whole pot of money that is available to the entrepreneurship class and you can withdraw a loan from there as long as you pay it back by a certain date and pay interest rates,” said Forsey.
Forsey spoke about the process of opening the bowling alley. “One of the big things was getting the lanes up and running. Because it had been closed for years the lanes and the machines weren’t working, we had to get in contact with people who could fix them,” she said. “Another big thing was painting, which took forever. We had to sand and scrape down all the gutters, the walls and the ball racks.”
The class has been in discussion about who will maintain the bowling alley in the future as current students graduate. “We don’t have an official plan yet but we have a lot of ideas,” said Forsey. “There is the opportunity for some students in the class to continue it on. There’s also the option if a buyer wanted to buy us out, then that could happen as well. But we are certainly hoping to make it last longer than this semester.”
“My favourite part of the experience was how real it is,” said Luc Doucette, a student in the class and the Argosy’s business manager. “It is completely different than your normal academic course, so much that I don’t even consider it a course, I considered it a job.”
Forsey’s favourite part of the semester was seeing how passionate her peers became about the project: “It was really cool to see everybody’s work and effort come through.”
The Strike Club has not set an official opening date yet, due to ongoing insurance paperwork. However, according to Forsey, the alley is open to clubs and societies through MASU insurance coverage. As for the official opening date, Forsey said, “I would certainly think the club will open before the summer.”