Revolutionary roofing concept wins echallenge

Thursday, 31 October 2002

A revolutionary idea for house roofing has won an Adelaide team more than $50,000 worth of prizes in a business planning competition run by the University of Adelaide and Hewlett-Packard Australia.

The Complete Roofing Solutions team won the second annual University of Adelaide Entrepreneurs' Challenge - known as the echallenge - by planning a business venture around its roofing idea. It was announced as the winner of the competition, ahead of four other finalists, by managing director of HP Australia Mr Paul Brandling at a dinner at the Radisson Playford Hotel and Suites last night (Wednesday).

Mr Brandling says the final gave the opportunity to see some of South Australia's brightest entrepreneurial minds present their business concepts. "The very high standard of the finalist teams indicates there are many good ideas waiting to be tapped," Mr Brandling says. "HP is proud to assist these entrepreneurs turn their theories into commercial reality."

More than 40 teams - with each team including at least one University of Adelaide student - entered the 2002 echallenge when it began in May.

Complete Roofing Solutions partner Jeremy Glaros says the win will give the company the opportunity to further develop its idea and is the perfect springboard for putting its product out in the marketplace.

"Winning the echallenge is a real boost for us, and will make our task of making a successful product that much easier," he says. "Even just doing the process involved in the competition was beneficial for us, from drawing up business plans to being able to meet and network with high-ranking businesspeople - and winning was an unexpected bonus.

"Our concept is to produce revolutionary roofing system products known as the VersaTILE Range for the global building industry. These products will provide builders with a vast range of benefits including markedly reduced installation times and costs, greater versatility, and increased ease of installation."

Mr Glaros and his Complete Roofing Solutions partner Andrew Richards will receive more than $50,000 in prizes, including money and computer products from HP Australia, consulting from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a CleverPath portal with service support from Computer Associates, and stationery from Corporate Express. Second place went to FashionTech, while third went to Active Innovations and Consulting.

The success of the 2002 echallenge is directly attributable to the generous support of its many sponsors who include founding sponsor Hewlett-Packard Australia, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Computer Associates, BankSA, Mitsubishi Motors, Corporate Express, Women Chiefs of Business Enterprise International, The Centre for Innovation, Business and Manufacturing, Taylor Collison, The Adelaide Graduate School of Business, Santos and The Federal Department of Industry Tourism and Resources through the Promoting Young Entrepreneurs' Scheme.

HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP merged with Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. The merged company had combined revenue of approximately $81.7 billion in fiscal 2001 and operations in more than 160 countries.

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