Notre Dame MBAs capture first prize in McCloskey Business Plan Competition

Top prize goes to company that aims to connect online shoppers and local retailers.

SOUTH BEND -- A Web site concept that enables online shoppers to receive products from local retailers within a day won first prize in the fifth annual McCloskey Notre Dame Business Plan Competition.

The team, composed of two seniors, three graduate students and one 2002 graduate, will win $15,000 as a result of their proposal.

The company, called LicketyShip, envisioned a system where online customers would have the ability to search for a product available within a certain ZIP code.

When a customer purchases an item, LicketyShip uses an existing courier service to have someone drive to the store, pick up the item, and deliver it to the customer on the same day it was ordered.

Current Notre Dame seniors Christopher Kelly and Aaron Wenger, current Notre Dame graduate students Justin Carter, Radu Olievschi and Sarah Coffman, and 2002 Notre Dame graduate Robert Pazornik teamed up to create the winning entry.

Their concept beat out 65 other entries. To enter, each team needed to have at least one Notre Dame student or alumnus and represent an enterprise that was either in the conceptual or early-growth stage.

The McCloskey competition was one of three competitions organized by the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The winners of all three competitions were announced Friday.

A Washington-based highway contractor, Max J. Kuney Co., took home first prize in the Dorothy Dolphin Notre Dame Family Business Plan Competition, which is designed to strengthen development of existing family-owned businesses.

In the Social Venture Plan Competition, Youth Training in Peace Education, an organization that wants to create a youth-oriented Web site to promote peace education captured the $5,000 first prize.

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