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From the Classroom to the Boardroom UNH's commercialization center gives a boost to a new idea By Suki Casanave '86G

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Gretchen Eastman '11 and her five co-workers never thought they'd be back on campus this fall. But that was before the giant red gift box—the one that takes a couple of people to lift and anchor to the top of a car. Last spring, Eastman and the others were weighing job options. Matt Robinson '11 had an offer from Liberty Mutual. Nick Blanchette '11 had a position lined up with a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. But this fall, on move-in day, the new alums were back on campus to promote their new business, Regaalo.

Perry Smith/UNH Photographic Services GIFTED: The Regaalo team, from left: Dennis Honan, Alan Hauf, adviser Peter Masucci, Jessica Streitmater '11, Christine Dinisi '11, Gretchen Eastman '11, Nick Blanchette '11 and Matt Robinson '11.

A variation on the Spanish word for "gift," Regaalo started as a project for the annual Holloway Prize competition held at UNH's Whittemore School of Business and Economics. The Regaalo team came in second out of 45 entries. Designed to make gift-giving simple for families and their far-away students, the online business connects merchants, parents and students in a shopping-giving-receiving triangle that supports the local economy, eliminates shipping costs and provides targeted, useful gifts. The idea attracted the attention of Mark Galvin, managing director of the N.H. Innovation Commercialization Center, who invited the group to become a resident startup company at the center's Pease Tradeport location. "Regaalo clearly had the crossover of a great idea with a huge market potential, along with a dedicated team," says Galvin, a successful entrepreneur himself.

Designed to accelerate the growth of high-tech startups, the center provides an address, office space, infrastructure support and help raising capital. Perhaps most important of all, companies get consulting help from industry veterans, including financial adviser Roger Tuttle and marketing executive Alan Hauf. UNH, which has part ownership in the center, will benefit financially as companies become successful. The university also gets help accelerating the commercialization of some of its most promising research and technology.

One resident company, for example, founded by Glen Miller, UNH professor of chemistry, has created a cutting-edge semiconductor coating for use in organic light-emitting diodes. (Read more about Miller's company.)

The Regaalo students-turned-employees, meanwhile, with guidance from the center's staff, have built a bigger team, bringing on extra technical support and CEO Dennis Honan, a former Lands' End executive, to get the company onto stable financial footing. Enthusiasm is high. "What I'm most excited about," says Eastman, marketing specialist, "is the reaction from parents." When the team tested their idea at orientation last June, they were hoping a couple hundred people would sign up as potential customers. They got so many in the first few hours that they raised their goal to 600. In the end, they hit 1,000. The results confirmed their hunch that they were on to something big—that the giant red gift box holds within it the promise of success.

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