With the Goal to Help Women and Girls, This Business Competition Winner's Concept Is Blossoming
LeShannon Wright was stunned. She had just learned that she placed first in the 2019 New Business Model Competition (NBMC), a contest sponsored by the New Jersey Acceleration Center at NJIT — this after making her first pitch for a business concept she had never talked about publicly before.
“I just basically spoke from the heart and … modeled [my story] after what I experienced. From there the first question was why would you be the best person to run this type of business. … That’s when the emotion came out, that’s when the truth came out,” said Wright, adding that she was shaking from nervousness throughout her seven-minute presentation to the judging panel.
Wright’s business concept, which garnered her a Tommy Award (named in honor of Thomas Edison) and a $3,000 Innovation Accelerator Fellowship, is Turning Tulips. It is part feminine hygiene subscription service, part personalized self-care and mentoring, for tweens and beyond. The 32-year-old NJIT MBA student, who grew up in Jersey City and now lives in Edison, was inspired to create Turning Tulips after struggling with a personal health crisis.
Beginning at age 12, Wright suffered from excruciating pain related to her monthly cycle. She saw numerous specialists, was hospitalized on several occasions, took various medications and missed many days of school and work. It wasn’t until she had a hysterectomy this past fall that she was definitively diagnosed with endometriosis and adenomyosis, both conditions affecting the uterus.
Having had no one who could truly empathize with her, she felt it would be therapeutic to share what she went through. While she was recovering from surgery, she started “thinking of a way that I could package up my experience and help other women or girls suffering from endometriosis and possibly … the decision of having a hysterectomy or continuing to take medicine for the rest of their lives. I was determined to make a difference.”
At that juncture Wright was in the midst of NJIT’s online MBA program, a convenient option that aligned with her career overseeing operations and technology at primary and secondary schools around New Jersey (she is currently director of operations at Cresthaven Academy Charter School in Plainfield). When the coursework introduced her to entrepreneurship and she then received, as all NJIT students did, an email invitation to participate in the NBMC, she decided to move ahead with her idea. But with no formal business plan, or even any promotional materials, there was much work to be done.
She chose the name, Turning Tulips, for its reference to the flower that turns toward sunlight, in contrast to a female’s cycle that, she says, can feel like a dark time. She beefed up her business model canvas — a holistic view of a business that targets its infrastructure, value proposition, customer base and finances — that she created originally as a course assignment and submitted it to the competition. Two weeks later, after being notified she was a finalist, she practiced her pitch, assembled subscription boxes and developed a PowerPoint presentation illustrating how she would make money as well as give back to the community. And though she was unable to make the pre-competition pitch training, she welcomed guidance from her MBA classmates.
“This is something that’s missing in the market,” noted Wright of Turning Tulips, which in addition to supplying customized packages containing feminine hygiene products, treats and natural pain remedies, provides a platform for education and support. Her goal is to destigmatize periods and fill the information gap, “so that if you are suffering … you have someplace you can go to.”
Following her victory at the NBMC, where she was greeted by other women with similar stories and actually sold two of the three sample boxes she brought for her presentation, it certainly appears she is onto something. That day Wright was also named the inaugural WinWin winner, which earned her an additional prize of $2,500. WinWin focuses on trisector business models that “help innovators identify and leverage the resources and assets of companies, nonprofits, and governments to develop profitable solutions with game-changing social impact.”
As part of her Innovation Accelerator Fellowship, Wright will participate in the NJIT Martin Tuchman School of Management (MTSM) Summer Lean Startup Accelerator, starting in late May. There she looks to “gain more information about how to position my business to be a go-to. … I want the program to help me with my marketing,” she said.
With this program and many other plans for Turning Tulips, 2020 is shaping up to be a busy year for Wright, who will complete her MBA studies in spring 2021. She has built a website and is already managing subscriptions. She has been invited to serve as a regular contributor to an online endometriosis magazine, DoYouEndo.com, and is writing a book about boys and puberty and hygiene as a sequel to her debut, “Grace Period: A Guide to Womanhood,” available on Amazon. And she will have a booth at a women’s expo to be held this fall, and expects to hold mentoring events at schools, community centers and boys’ and girls’ clubs.
“Everything’s taken off without me really having planned for it. … There’s no way I’m going to let this fail without fighting for it,” Wright vowed, adding with laugh, “I have not slept since I launched, because every time I think about going to sleep, I also think about something that I think I should have done before I close my eyes.”
More About the NBMC
The NBMC is designed for early-stage business ideas with proof of concept. It features two tracks: one for full-time students attending a North Jersey area college or university, and another for North Jersey community members proposing a startup in the region.
Eight finalists are selected in each track to present their businesses to a panel of judges. They are scored on necessity and purpose, application to solving a problem and financial feasibility. The subsequent four student winners and four community winners each receive a $3,000 Innovation Acceleration Fellowship, sponsored by Capital One, to participate in the MTSM Summer Lean Startup Accelerator and further develop their business ideas.
The 2019 NBMC was held Dec. 3 on the NJIT campus and marked the 11th consecutive year that the university hosted and coordinated the event. Wright’s fellow student winners include Owais Aftab, with a device to treat auditory processing disorder; Keyra Pulliam, offering beauty services for individuals who have difficulty with mobility; and Anh Tong, using computers and automation to commercialize synthetic tissue.
“We had a very impressive group of submissions this year — 92 in total — and an equally impressive group of judges, speakers and advisers who really raised the bar,” remarked Michael Erhlich, associate professor of finance at NJIT and co-director of the New Jersey Innovation Acceleration Center.
