Fireworks and Paranoia

Welcome to MBA 820

I recently graduated with an MBA from "The" Ohio State University. It was a very rewarding journey that started two years earlier and it was a very smooth journey until the last two weeks of school.

Part of the core curriculum for all MBA students is the MBA 820 class which is a Global Macroeconomic class that covers the political, economic, social and technological aspects of a global economy.

Professor Kistruck was an engaging presenter and he had an interesting project for us. He walked through a local Target and selected items off the shelf that anyone could buy nationwide and our project was to determine why the product was made in its country of origin. Some items selected included baby food, a rubber ducky, a scented candle and sparklers. (And if you have never heard a heavy Russian accent say the word "Rubber Ducky," find a Russian woman and ask her to say it.)

Sparklers sounded intriguing and I was sitting next to Neelima whom I worked with on a project the previous quarter for our Marketing class. She and I joined six other members of the team that selected the sparklers which carried a label "Made in Thailand."

So put your ear close to the phone - Part I

I contacted the manufacturer a couple of times and was unable to get ahold of anyone. We were doing our best to gather information from third party sources, but we had only come up with one item that we identified as why the sparklers could be made in Thailand and that was a duty imposed on sparklers, specifically Chinese sparklers, to prevent their dumping of the product in the US market.

During the summer course, the professor was gone for 4 weeks while other professors taught the class and it was while he was gone, I was successful in contacting the company. Other teams also had a lot of difficulty getting any information from the manufacturer as we did.

On July 24th I called and introduced myself to the operator that answered. The call lasted only 4 minutes according to my phone bill and I bet my cell phone company rounds up.

"Hi. My name is Bryon Jordan. I am a grad student at Ohio State and I am taking a class on Global Macroeconomics this quarter. We are doing a project assigned to us by our professor and our project is on your sparklers. Is there someone I can talk with regarding the manufacturing of your sparklers?"

The receptionist told me to hold on one moment and the phone started ringing again.

"Hello, this is Regina," answered a voice on the other end. (I changed her name in this story.)

"Hi Regina. My name is Bryon Jordan. I am a grad student at Ohio State and I am taking a class on Global Macroeconomics this quarter. We are doing a project assigned to us by our professor and our project is on your sparklers. Is there someone I can talk with regarding the manufacturing of your sparklers?"

I probably repeated word for word my same introduction that I used with the receptionist.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"Ohio State."

"Where?"

"I am a graduate student in the MBA program at Ohio State."

"Where?"

"Fisher College at Ohio State. It's in Columbus, Ohio," I answered.

"Where?"

Seriously. She asked like six times and I started wondering if she was so far in BFE that she had perhaps never heard of the largest university in the nation. I again reiterated why I was calling explaining I was hoping to talk to someone about their product for a class project.

Finally I received a clue as to perhaps why she was stalling for time.

"I find it awfully suspicious that you are calling me from the state of Ohio and our largest competitor is also in Ohio."

"Really?" I responded. I had no idea. I also had never been accused of corporate espionage, but she was implying that this is what I was doing!!!

If I were trying to obtain corporate secrets regarding their company, wouldn't I pick the one state where their largest competitor did not operate? Seriously! How idiotic is this thought process by her?

I tried to think of how to prove to her I was a student, but I was realizing that she was not open to logic and thinking.

So I skipped telling her a 7th time where I was calling from and asked if there was someone I could talk to about their manufacture of sparklers.

She was clear in telling me that their supply chain consisted of proprietary information and I would not get any information regarding it.

I asked her if I could ask one more question and she did not say, "No," so I asked:

"We came across information that mentioned an anti-dumping duty for Chinese sparklers to prevent them from flooding the US market. Is this why you are getting their sparklers from Thailand?"

She shot back, "I don't like what you are implying!"

I'm sitting on my couch thinking, what am I implying? That you are smart business people to find a way to lower your cost because of a government imposed duty against one country.

I started to press again and realized it was futile, so I thanked her for her time and hung up.

Keep in mind, at any time, all this lady had to do was hang up the phone if she did not want to talk to me. I don't know why she didn't do that.

So put your ear close to the phone - Part II

I jumped online and looked up Ohio fireworks and came across Phantom Fireworks in Youngstown, Ohio. I gave them a call and the receptionist forwarded me to a voicemail of someone in Marketing. I knew this was not the number I wanted to talk to, but I left a message anyhow, hoping luck would come my way.

A little before 3:00 p.m., my phone rang. I answered it and it was a gentleman named William Weimer. He introduced himself as a VP and general counsel for the B.J. Alan Company who own Phantom Fireworks. I know I did not leave the message with him, so I could only assume they contacted the corporate attorney with a message asking about sparklers.

I introduced myself and explained I was a student at Ohio State and I had this project regarding sparklers.

"Why are you calling me?" he asked.

"I wanted to learn about sparklers from someone in the industry," I explained.

"We are finding stuff online, but I really was hoping to talk to an industry expert. I'll be honest, the product our professor gave us was not even your product. It was [competitor's name withheld]. When I called them, well, they thought I was working for you and trying to commit corpoate espionage."

He laughed.

"I know. I couldn't believe it either," I said.

After he had his chuckle he was wonderful in talking with me for almost 30 minutes about the industry and giving us a lot of direction for us to research. His explaining the political, economic and social changes in China and in the industry enabled us to draw our own conclusions and write our paper without ever talking about their competitor.

I thanked him for his help and emailed him a couple times during the quarter to update him as we wrote our paper.

The pretty lies that they tell

Professor Kistruck returned on August 10th to class. On August 13th, I received an email from him telling me he received a troubling email from the company we were given and he and I needed to have a meeting on Monday, August 17th, at 5:00 p.m.

I replied I would be there, but I asked what the email was about, but I figured it was regarding my four minute call. I explained to him in my email reply that I was very polite and professional when I called as I introduced myself as a student [and defacto representative] of Ohio State.

He did not answer what it was regarding.

I walked in on Monday with Amarendra, one of my teammates and we were later joined by Rakesh and Jay.

Regina wrote a complaint to Ohio State saying I was rude and hostile in communicating with her. I asked to read the letter and handed it back to the professor telling him, "She is full of shit."

I brought my phone bill with me to show the entire exchange was four minutes, I retold the story of what happened and how she reacted.

To the professor's credit, he believed me, but he wanted the whole thing to "go away."

"I'd like you to write an email apologizing ..."

"Not going to happen," I said cutting him off. "No way. I did nothing wrong. I do not owe her an apology."

This discussion went on for ten minutes.

"Let's get a recording of the call. She's an attorney." I thought it was a great idea on my part.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"Because the attorney at Phantom Fireworks told me! She's being a bully and abusive with her power. I don't tolerate bullies! I won't put up with it!"

"But that escalates it and we want it to go away."

"But it vindicates me!" I argued. "If you hear it, you'll know I was not rude or hostile and her email is full of lies."

"But that escalates it and we want it to go away."

Eventually, we found a compromise where I would write an email explaining that there clearly was a misunderstanding and that it would reassure them that I did not have any proprietary information or intellectual property.

The professor felt Regina's biggest concern was that we obtained proprietary information or intellectual properties, which we did not. I also think the professor's ass might have been on the line because we did this under his direction.

According to the professor, in 82 previous projects, they had never had any company react this way.

"I think maybe next year you should not do sparklers," suggested Amarendra.

"Actually, I think you should," I countered. "See how the next group of students reacts to this."

That said, I don't think sparklers are going to be on the list next year of projects.

"Maybe we can send them a copy of our report so they know we don't have any intellectual properties," offered Rakesh.

Amarendra spoke up, "No. This is an MBA project. If they want our analysis, they can pay for it. There's 8 of us, so $40,000 sounds like a good sum."

Not only did this make all four of us MBA students snicker, but it made me realize how shrewd Amarendra was as well as being a great researcher and teammate.

There were several other students that talked me down during this event including a Colonel in the US army who was a classmate, a lawyer (also a classmate) suggesting the best I can do is write that state's Supreme Court, and my teammates who saw me as angry as I have ever been after the stunt the lawyer pulled with that email full of lies.

I wanted a pound of flesh from this woman. At one point, one of the teammates suggested we include photos of our sources and I was going to have the six year old across the street draw a picture of a witch holding a sparkler with a caption stating "Artist's rendition - photo not available." Yong talked me out of it.

And you realize you wanna let go

I was in the lab that Sunday with Shawn, a former teammate in another class, and Rick, a current teammate in a different class. Rick and I were both working on our individual projects for the Stock Market class. They were both aware of the story and Shawn had a few moments to kill as he jumped online behind me.

Suddenly Shawn speaks up. "Is her name Regina Thompson?"

"Yes, I said."

"General Counsel?"

"Yes," I said feeling nervous.

"Is her grandmother named Mabel?"

"Dude! You're gonna get me in trouble!"

We had a brief 20 minute presentation in class two weeks later where I briefly mentioned my being accused of corporate espionage. Before we presented, the professor mentioned he had not heard anything regarding the email I had to write, so it was closed. I finally calmed down by then.

Everything turned out OK and I graduated on 8/30.

I also plan on only buying fireworks from Phantom Fireworks going forward because they were so helpful in understanding the industry.