BY CRAIG FREILICH

North Country This Week

CANTON -- A SUNY Canton business management graduate who began his landscape power tools sales business right out of school has helped some students in an entrepreneurial competition at the college.

Jonathan T. Pinckney, a 2018 management grad, began selling EGO electric lawn products directly to consumers through his Garden Pro Tools company immediately after graduating from college. Previously, the enterprising student launched J&J Groundworks while enrolled in his two- and four-year degree programs.

More than 40 SUNY Canton students participated in the 5th SUNY Canton Roopreneur competition to help the college alumnus and entrepreneur expand local business.

Management professor Dr. Charles R. Fenner was looking for innovative businesses that needed some creative thinking, and he approached Pinckney, a former student, to see if he would be part of the competition this year.

So Pinckney agreed to take part in competition, which challenges students to help owners discover new ways to expand their businesses, rethink their customer base, and demonstrate ways how to reach their customers.

Roopreneur is sponsored by a SUNY Canton College Foundation grant, which funds cash awards for the top three entries. Typically, those enrolled in business programs create new marketing models for the companies, but the competition is open to all students regardless of discipline. Students have worked with Canton businesses Luna and Gamer Craze in previous years, a press release from the college said.

The competition “gave students the challenge to improve ways to look at something I'm not thinking of,” Pinckney said.

"Jon is no stranger to innovation," Prof. Fenner said, so when Pinckney came on board, they challenged the students “to identify Jon's market demographic, use appropriate promotional tools to sell Jon's products and show how his products are better than his competitors’."

Students in industrial technology, business and finance signed up, among others, Fenner said. "The entire student body is represented in these entries including on campus students, online only students and commuter students from all over St. Lawrence County."

Having previously taken classes with Fenner, Pinckney saw the collaboration as a natural fit. He said he hoped “that providing real-world business scenarios is as helpful to these students as it was to me during my education," he said.

He has no storefront, so he wanted to differentiate for the customer some aspect of his business, as opposed to what big box stores do.

Pinckney said he chose EGO as his product line because he saw it as filling an emerging need for reliable lawn-care products that run completely on electricity. "We have the best and most powerful battery-operated equipment on the market," Pinckney said. "It can help make yardwork less of a chore."

The students came up with the idea of adding customers' views to his online outreach, testimonials about his business and his products, which he has done on his website, gardenprotools.com/.

And they suggested "maybe teaming up with other businesses, maybe realtors, maybe a nursery," he said.

Students also presented plans to diversify advertising and offering rentals, among other strategies.

The winning student was Kevin Dorr, a finance major from Getzville. Behind him were students from Brooklyn, Malone, Toronto, Glens Falls and Georgia.

The Roopreneur program “gives students something more hands-on rather than a scenario out of a textbook,” Pinckney said. “It’s a little more fun, a little more satisfying.”