Bloomington Brands LLC was estabalished in 2003 and is based in Bloomington, IN. It enables two very special organizations, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (Marysville, OH) and the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN), to provide resident business school students with real-world marketing experience. The brand managed is Osmocote® Plant Food. Scotts owns the trademark and provides essential business functions like R&D, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory control, sales, order fulfillment, etc. Bloomington Brands handles marketing functions like brand strategy, consumer communications, trade and promotional activities, sizing, pricing, product formulation, packaging and trade dress. From a student perspective, it is an experience that cannot be gained at any other institution. Brand team members participate in the management of a broadly distributed product for one academic year. Projects range from creating a new SKU or display unit to the management of a sweepstakes promotion. Students with Brands experience make excellent employee prospects because those that don’t migrate to Scotts have selected to work for Colgate, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Eli Lilly, Nestle, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, and Procter & Gamble – to name a few. Throughout the program year, students are mentored and guided by Bob Stohler. Bob is a retired Executive Officer from Scotts, where he managed that company's $1.5 billion North American business unit. Prior to Scotts, Bob was President, Rubbermaid Europe, and before that, Vice President and CFO of Synthes North America. His business experience also includes SC Johnson (13 years) and Procter & Gamble (10 years).