Our school has been wanting a “Chief” spirit store for a long time and the Marketing II students are running it. It is called the Spear-It store. The class has been wanting to get the school community involved as far as merchandise/apparel and they have created a store to help with this.
This is a big thing for students and parents at our school, making it to where they can buy merchandise such as clothes, coasters, hats, and other small accessories. For clothes, they have hoodies, long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, pants, and socks.
There are many different people running the store including teacher and DECA/Markting II sponsor, Cara Posegate. She oversees and takes care of most of the financial aspects within the store as well as Blythe Schaumberg, who is another sponsor. Other members that help with the store are all of the Marketing II students.
“The advanced Marketing class (Marketing II) are the ones that run it. They design the apparel, they are the ones that work the store behind the counter, and they work during third block from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm,” Posegate said.
In order to run the store as a student, you don’t just need to be in Marketing II but you also need to be in DECA. This is part of the process of how the Spear-it store is going to fund DECA.
The sales of the store go towards the business programs at our school to give the members a better experience.
“The sales go towards DECA, and you have to be in DECA to be in Marketing II. So, all of them are DECA members and a lot of them are even DECA officers. All of the sales come back to the main program to fund all sorts of things,” Posegate said.
Considering the amount of traveling and events DECA has going on, having a store that will get the community involved in our school and help DECA at the same time. This is one of the significant things the store does for us.
As previously listed, the store has many options of clothing and accessories. The pricing of these items are listed in the store, and Posegate has an analysis of the costs.
“The accessory prices are trucker hats that are about $20, socks for $15, fany packs/beltbags for $15, stickers for a dollar, pins that the Marketing II students made last year for $2, lanyards for $5, and water bottles for $15. For the bigger apparel such as sweatshirts, t-shirts, joggers, sweatpants, crewnecks, jackets, these items will run you anywhere from $30 to $50 except for the t-shirts which are $15,” Posegate said.
These are just the prices of some of the items they have as of now. They are looking to add to the store with new clothes and accessories.
Junior Gage Garrison has bought from the store before and he had a good experience.
“I think the way that it is run by students and the variety of items to choose from is really cool. The prices are also realistic, so it is a positive for people wanting to buy our schools merchandise,” Garrison said.
Garrison’s good experience is what Marketing II wants students to think about the store.
As said above, the store is mainly student run with the advisory of Posegate and Schaumburg. For students at our school to have the opportunity of running a small business, it will set them up for success if they want to be successful entrepreneurs one day.
“I think it is so cool, especially because it is specifically student ran. All the designs that you see in the store are from students the past two years in Marketing II. We had a great opening day and we are working on new designs for the start of next year. All of the students have a say and it is collaborative as a group,” Posegate said.
