Tom Kuhn, owner of Qnity, an education and advisory company, and the founder of the 2 to 10 Project recently announced an exciting new collaboration for the 2 to 10 Leadership Conference in 2014. “The University of Massachusetts Boston’s Entrepreneurship Center will advance the conference in a number of ways, including providing speakers from the center’s Executive Board and offering the benefits of a world-class university venue,” says Kuhn. “Most importantly the university’s Entrepreneurship Center will launch an MBA-level Business Consulting course, which will train top salon owner students and direct them in semester-long research projects for select 2 to 10 businesses.”

The Spring 2014 course will be taught by Prof. Benyamin Lichtenstein, and Kuhn and his team will work with him to develop the course content. Students will be carefully vetted and matched with appropriate business partners. Projects will focus on research and analysis of proprietary data from the annual 2 to 10 survey, and application of the findings to the key areas of finance, operations, marketing education and human resources.

“This is about helping multi-site companies make strategic decisions based on industry and local insight previously unavailable to them,” says David McFarlance, the direct of the Entrepreneurship Center. “I am excited about this project. It takes urban entrepreneurship efforts to the next level and presents an opportunity for our faculty to engage on a nationwide perspective in a substantial industry and be able to translate that into similar service/inventory based industries.”

The conference will be held on the Boston campus on April 14-15. The 2 to 10 Project was created to gain a better understanding of the multi-location model, financials and business practices for salons/spas with between two and 10+ locations. The goal of the project and its resulting study is to propel growth opportunities, drive higher profitability, and create business succession strategies for its members. To learn more about the project, visit 2to10project.com.

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