COMPANY A Conferencing grew out of an idea two classmates and I tossed around while at boarding school in New Hampshire during our final high school year. We determined that we¡d like to work together in the future, but realized that learning the basics of business administration at college was a realistic first step.
             Because of my own background (born in Australia, educated in Singapore, France, the United Kingdom and the United States) I enrolled in international business at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, a recognized and accredited business school. One of my colleagues studied communications at the University of Arizona, the other at the University of San Diego, California.
             Although our home bases and colleges were widely disparate, we kept in touch with each other, family and friends via conference calls. My home base is New York City. With the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the subsequent widely-publicized reluctance of U.S. business people to travel unless absolutely necessary, it became apparent to us that we might develop a niche market in the conferencing industry. Finding the appropriate niche was key to us. Over the next few years until graduation we researched available conferencing providers, utilizing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. We realized that we might not necessarily be able to compete with those servicing Fortune 100 and 500 or even 1000 companies. (However, since the inception of our company, we have tried, and in two instances, achieved significant gains in this area as well).
             The process of strategic marketing planning was definitely beneficial to us. It was of prime importance in bringing about the successful launch of COMPANY A Conferencing in 2002. Our initial plans allowed for a +- profitable period of three years, after which we felt we should move on to other fields. As it has transpired, we have kept close to evol...