Local development guru making

move to Michigan

Eichelbaum will relocate firm, take university positions

Cincinnati Business Courier - June 15, 2007; by Lisa Biank Fasig

Stanley Eichelbaum, the retail development consultant who from Cincinnati built an international reputation, is relocating his firm, Marketing Developments Inc., after accepting both a teaching and a director's position at Michigan State University.

Eichelbaum - who moved to Florida in 2005 but kept his business offices here - will serve as director of international initiatives in the university's advertising, public relations and retailing program, in East Lansing, Mich. He also will be teaching at his alma mater beginning in the fall, with a course in communications, retailing and development.

The move follows Eichelbaum's involvement with the university's alumni board. He was impressed by Michigan State's worldwide reach, with roughly 160 international programs and plans to open a campus in Dubai. Eichelbaum, who has consulted on projects around the globe, saw this as visionary.

"There has been some concern about retail as a career path and the need to invigorate it," he said. "I think they have realized that there is an under-intellectualized industry that has a lot of potential."

Marketing Developments has helped consult, research and plan more than $3.8 billion projects in more than 45 countries. Among its most noted projects are Al Ghurair City in Dubai; Nova America Shopping in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and downtown development strategies for Portland, Ore., in 2002, and for Cincinnati in 1993.

More recently, Eichelbaum was retained to develop revival plans for the retail communities of Florence and Springdale.

His pedigree suits Michigan State, which has been reconstructing its staff to include some of the top industry professionals, said Richard Cole, department chairman of the advertising, public relations and retailing program. Eichelbaum, he said, is a "big fish."

"Stan is very uniquely positioned because he is a graduate of our advertising department, spent a good deal of his career dealing with marketing and communications, but also spent a career in retail," he said.

Marketing Developments is in the process of moving to East Lansing. Its four employees will remain on a contract basis.

Stanley Eichelbaum

Cincinnati Business Courier - June 18, 2007
http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/06/18/story8.html