From September 2014 to April 2015, fourteen students from the fourth year prepared for the International Trade Fair in New York City. They designed a menu, catalogue, homepage, flyers and invoices for their practice firm Amadeus Cooking, which sells Austrian specialties in the form of menus. For the trade show they also collected everything needed to decorate and ready their booth.

On 10 April 2015 the group went to New York where they had the chance to see the city and attend the Global Business Challenge. The Global Business Challenge involved solving a case study about Victorinox, Swiss Army. It included preparation of a SWOT-Analysis, a marketing mix and a market penetration strategy within a two hour time-limit and presentation of solution. Over 300 students from all over the world were divided into 30 teams and had to quickly adapt in order to work effectively and synergistically together. The teams who placed first and second included our students Astrid Hirschfeld and André Bandi.

On 15 April the students faced their final challenge – the International Trade Show. There they had to compete with 153 other schools from different countries and sell their products. Our students used Austrian sweets and the Austrian costumes “Trachten” as their USP. Customers could take a photograph with our “Trachtenpaar” and later find it on the social network Facebook. The Amadeus Cooking team made a sensational total sale of $ 173,428.50 in only a few hours.

We visited the Austrian Consul Dr. Waltraud Dennhardt-Herzog, New York to hear a discussion about Austrians and their businesses in New York and the services the Consulate provides to the Austrian population in New York. In the spare time students had the chance to go sightseeing. These visits included: viewing the sunset from the Empire State Building, a bus tour through Uptown, the Ground Zero Memorial, the Metropolitan Museum, the Times Square, the Central Park and much more.

The whole Group would like to thank Ms. Daniela Haslauer and Ms. Marla Le Pichon for being their supervisors on this trip!