VEDP Recruiting Companies for IMP Program

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) is currently recruiting businesses to participate in the highly-successful International Market Planning (IMP) Program.

In the IMP Program, teams of top graduate business students from one of 12 colleges and universities in the Commonwealth are paired with a Virginia business to develop a comprehensive export marketing plan to assist the company in examining a new foreign market or expanding their existing markets. The students are supervised by an experienced professor. At the end of the semester, the students teams present an executive summary along with a written proposal in an oral presentation to the company’s top management.
Everyone is a winner in the IMP Program. Virginia businesses can develop new markets and increase sales. Local communities, like Chesterfield, can benefit from expanding job opportunities, and the graduate students gain valuable business experience in the real world, that can’t be duplicated in the classroom.

Since the establishment of the IMP Program in 1988, more than 300 businesses, ranging from small entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 firms, have benefited from the comprehensive, tailor-made export marketing plans.

Diversitec, Inc., in Midlothian, along with their IMP team from VCU, recently received the Governor’s Award for Excellence for their IMP project. The VCU team developed technical specifications and requirements needed in the telecom transmission and switching equipment industry. The project identified Brazil, Mexico and Costa Rica as key markets for Diversitec’s initial exporting efforts.

For more information about this program, contact Jay Hershey, IMP Coordinator at VEDP, at (804) 371-8915 or fax (804) 371-8860.