John B. and Lillian E. Neff College of Business and Innovation

UT music major’s handcrafted trumpet wins first place prize in COBI’s 2016 Business Plan Competition

The first place winner Mackenzie Miller and Dr. Sonny Ariss, Chairman of the Department of Management, COBIThe winners of the 2016 business competition, left to right, Andrea Liedel and Hannah Ogden, Morpho Bag; Kevin Gibson, IceTyme; Joseph Strobbe, Quick Deploy, Casualty Carry Harness; and Mackenzie Miller, Freedom Model Trumpet.

The winners of The University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation's sixth annual Business Innovation Competition were announced on April 20, with $17,500 in prize money being distributed to those who placed in the top four.

The proposal for the Freedom Model Trumpet most impressed the judges, winning Mackenzie Miller, a senior music major in the UT College of Communications and the Arts, the first place prize of $10,000.

The panel thought Mackenizie’s proposal was amazingly impressive,” said Dr. Sonny Ariss, Chairman of the COBI Management Department.

Miller’s company, Miller Handcraft, designs and produces high quality handcrafted trumpets. The Freedom model will be the first product to be launched. It combines both the use of three standard piston valves, as well as an additional three-piston hand slide. This combination allows the musician to choose from the larger variety of musical performance styles.

Originally from Orrville, Ohio, Miller said she “fell in love” with UT when she came here to major in engineering.

“My family is very musically inclined,” Miller said.  “I started playing the flute in the fifth grade and switched to the trumpet in high school.”

At UT, she switched her major to music. Then she started building the Freedom model trumpet, which combines the traditional piston valves with a hard slide.

“No one has been commercially producing these for years, and some old existing models sell for up to $10,000,” she explained. “So I build these myself, buying sheet metal, hammering it out.”

A UT campus bus driver, Miller said she learned about the annual COBI Business plan competition - - which is open to all UT faculty, staff and students - - by seeing a poster for the competition.

“I was already planning on developing the business. I watched Youtube videos about developing a business plan and checked out the websites of suggested business plan sites which were on the poster,” she said.

Miller said after her proposal had passed the first round of judging and she was asked to present before the judges, she was quite nervous.

“I’m very shy,” Miller said, “but the panel was very supportive of this, and they gave me the confidence of going in the right direction.”

Miller will graduate this May and plans on continuing the business. The list price on her trumpet is $4,500.

“I hope to eventually be able to make about 25 at a time over a 3 month period, selling them online and by going to conferences. Ideally I would like to perform with a symphony and continue building trumpets.”

Other winners of the competition were:               

Second Place winner ($5,000) is Quick Deploy, Casualty Carry Harness, by Joseph Strobbe - a deployable harness that empowers a single individual to efficiently remove an injured person from immediate danger while maintaining full use of their hands.

Third Place winner ($2,000) is IceTyme, by Kevin Gibson – the only app and website business plan in this year’s finals competition, IceTyme focuses on the marketing of ice rinks and targets hockey players, figure skaters, open skaters and rink managers to efficiently fill the facilities.

Fourth place winner ($500) is Morpho Bag, by Hannah Ogden, Kathryn Whitehill, Justin Lyberger, Andrea Liedel    - a product that will provide an improved method for removal of specimens during a laparoscopic procedure.

“The sixth year of the business competition was a remarkable success as COBI received 25 entries from across UT campuses,” Dr. Ariss said.   “I cannot be happier than to see the students of the four winning entries this year going for their goal. Through this competition, as well as through classes and other activities in the College of Business and Innovation, we choose to play an important role in fostering the entrepreneurial spirit by encouraging people to start their own businesses." 

“The spirit of entrepreneurship is critically important to the ongoing success of every university and every community,” noted COBI Dean Gary Insch. “Our business competition truly reflects our emphasis on supporting innovation, fostering creative thinking and nurturing the entrepreneurial environment which is so essential for the economic growth of this region.”

“We owe special thanks to the panel of area business professionals who donated their time and talents to serve as judges in the competition, carefully reviewing each of the 25 entries into the competition and then meeting with the finalists, hearing their presentations and questioning them about their projects,” Dr. Ariss said. The judges who participated in the 2016 COBI Business Plan competition were:

• Daniel Slifko,Chief Operating Officer at Rocket Ventures, LLC

• Joel Epstein, Managing Director & Principal, Waverly Partners LLC

• Chris Anderson, President, Anderson Strategy LLC

• Anthony Calamunci, Managing Director, Fisher Broyles LLC

• Craig Burns, Attorney, Marshall Melhorn LLC

• Tom Schmidt, Ed Schmidt Automotive

• Charles Hodge, Financial Advisor, Mass Mutual

Prize money is awarded to the newly formed business entity, not to the individuals.

Last Updated: 6/27/22