Two Wheaton Warrenville South students win DemandTec Retail Challenge!
Erik Anderson and Justin Koehler, seniors at Wheaton Warrenville South High School, received $5,000 in scholarship money as the Chicago Region Champions in the DemandTec Retail Challenge. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, DemandTec is a math-based software company that helps retailers and consumer products manufacturers quantify consumer demand in order to make better business decisions. In regional partnership with The Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), whose North American headquarters is in Lisle, the DemandTec Retail Challenge is a scholarship competition open to high school seniors that gives students a taste of how math is applied in a business world context.
Working in teams of two, students play the role of a pricing analyst during a two week on-line simulation. Presented with sales, pricing, merchandising and inventory history of a hypothetical assortment of products, teams are responsible for maximizing profit by making daily pricing and inventory decisions. Each team's prices influence the “market price” for the region and thus the resulting consumer demand. At the ten of the two week simulation, the three teams with the highest profits advance to their Regional Final.
At the Chicago Regional Final, held at Illinois Institute of Technology's Rice Lake Campus in Wheaton on Nov 18, each of the three regional finalist teams, two from Wheaton Warrenville South High School and one from the Illinois Math and Science Academy, presented their analysis to a panel of judges from the retail industry. Teams were judged on their analysis, teamwork, and presentation skills. The Chicago Region Championship was awarded to Erik Anderson and Justin Koehler and they will compete in the National Semi-finals on Dec. 5 by participating in a 3-hour intensive on-line simulation. The top ten teams that achieve the highest profit will be given the chance to travel to New York City for the Grand Championship round on Jan. 10, 2011 at NASDAQ where the winning team will be awarded additional scholarship money.
According to Wheaton Warrenville South High School Principal, David Claypool, “We can't be more proud of these two young men. It is because of their hard work and the support of fantastic District 200 teachers and their parents that they made it this far.”