In a nutshell, you get a box of 4 educational toys curated for your child depending on age/development (you can go with what their experts choose or you can log in to the website and make substitutions). Sparkbox Toys is a toy rental subscription service.
So when I came across Sparkbox Toys, boy oh boy, was I excited!!! For more on that venture, read “The rise of the social enterprise”.As an avid library goer who takes out books and DVDs on a weekly basis, the idea of toy rentals or regular swaps always intrigued me but we never got coordinated enough to arrange something with our neighborhood friends.
It went to co-founders of the online teacher development program 1 Million Teachers: Hakeem Subair, MMIE’17 Rizma Butt, MMIE’17 and Eric Zhang, MMIE’18. The online format extended the competition’s reach with participants and attendees from four continents.Īlso new this year: a $5,000 People’s Choice award. While the competition is usually held in Toronto, this year’s event was virtual due to COVID. Typical customers do around £700 million (CDN$1.2 billion) in annual sales.īoth Barr and Fisher say they appreciate UPStart’s support and judges’ advice. Sparkbox works with both online and bricks-and-mortar retailers in Europe. Sparkbox increased a retailer’s profit per unit sold by 85 per cent in a recent pilot, she says. But with artificial intelligence, “we can help them understand the trends in real time and use data to drive their decisions,” says Fisher. The company (which won $25,000 at UPstart) uses machine learning and natural language processing to help fashion retailers and seasonal businesses optimize pricing.įashion shops traditionally rely on previous year’s sales to set prices. Price is rightįisher worked at Target before moving to England where she launched Sparkbox over two years ago. So, “we see a lot of potential to grow,” Barr says. The ready-to-drink protein category is expected to see annual compound growth of eight per cent from 2020 to 2027. “Instead of a coffee and a donut or muffin, grab a Brüst for a healthier mid-day snack,” he explains.īrüst is sold online and in Canadian grocery stores. The result is Brüst, a protein-packed cold-brew coffee to help people fuel up on the go. Why not combine the two into a tasty beverage? Sometimes they’d have a shake in one hand and coffee in the other. Barr, a triathlete who worked in beverage marketing at Nestlé, and Gupta, a competitive squash player, both regularly drank protein shakes after a workout. The annual competition is hosted by Smith’s Centre for Business Venturing and Queen’s Venture Network.īrüst, which took home $30,000, was started in 2018 by Barr and Amar Gupta.
Alumni judges could split the prize money among as many teams as they wished. They were among eight teams that pitched their businesses. Her company, Sparkbox, is based in England.īoth earned a share of $55,000 in funding at the UPstart Venture Challenge in December. Lindsay Fisher, BCom’12, saw how artificial intelligence can help fashion retailers earn higher profits. Josh Barr, BCom’10, set out to make a tastier protein drink as co-founder of Brüst Beverage Company in Toronto. The winners of the UPstart Venture Challenge at Smith can attest to that. These are the ingredients that take businesses from startup to success.
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