High School Spirit Store

Issue 004

Every Wednesday at noon, the team at MerchLab gets together for lunch in their conference room. They discuss a challenge that one of the distributors is having. As a group, they come together to help solve the challenge.

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Max, was that your grandson that was in here yesterday?

Yes, Blake is in 10th grade now. I can’t believe how tall he is.

Blake and I went to get lunch to catch up. He loves coming into the office to see the products we have. Harold showed Blake the new stuff from Origaudio.

Max, I told Blake we could put any logo he wants on the speakers, backpacks, and chargers. Blake said he wants a bunch of products decorated with his high school logo. He wants to use them on the bus when they travel for hockey games.

Harold, you told him I would buy him all of that?

I am sure Origaudio will give you a good deal. I will get the art from Blake and create some cool virtuals.

When Blake’s friends at school see his new swag they are going to be jealous.

We can set up an automated e-commerce store for his school.

I am sure his school has a store. All high schools have e-commerce stores.

I did some digging into high school e-commerce sites last year for my cousin. He is a high school basketball coach, and he asked me to help with uniforms. Most high school teams do their own thing. At the same high school, the basketball team will order uniforms from a different company than the football team. The tennis team will order from a different company than the swim team.

We don’t want to be in the uniform business. We want to be in the spirit store business. Let the coaches source their own uniforms. We will build an e-commerce store for the whole school.

High school kids and their parents will love our products.

The parents will love the tents, chairs, and umbrellas for the outdoor sports.

The students will love the speakers, chargers, popsockets, and backpacks.

I want to design the crop top hoodies from Independent. The girls will love them.

I will get Blake some products to show his friends. The students can speak to the school about updating their spirit store.

We can let the kids design products for the store. Kids today are wizards with Illustrator.

That would be great. The students will love that.

When I researched high school uniforms, I learned that schools use their spirit stores as a fundraising tool.

I would love to help high schools raise thousands of dollars. Hopefully, they use the money to pay their teachers more money. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated.

When we are done here, I am going to reach out to my high school and offer them a spirit store. I love how we can use our stores for so many reasons.

College Swag Stores

Issue 001

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Harold and Olivia did you take classes online in undergrad?

My school had classes that you could go to live but were also recorded if you wanted to watch them online.

We didn’t have online classes but I know that the future is online education. My cousin is a nationally ranked golfer and she goes to online school so she can travel for golf.

I met with Walden University last week. Have you heard of it?

My cousin got her masters degree from Walden. I couldn’t believe you could get a masters degree online but she said the education was very good. Her company paid half of the tuition.

It is pretty amazing the classes they offer. They have students from all over the world.

Do they send swag to all of their new students? They can’t have a campus bookstore if it is all online.

I met with Viviana who is in charge of their merchandise and she is overwhelmed. They don’t have an online store. She literally gets calls and emails all day from people who need merchandise. Her job has turned into ordering swag. She can get an email from the president of the school who needs gifts for investors and then get an email from admissions who wants to send out swag to alumni in Canada.

I wonder how many people are out there that take brand merch orders all day from people at their company. What is that job title?

I bet most companies have people that do this as part of their job. People in sales, marketing, HR and events need a main person in headquarters to contact when they need swag. If the company is big enough they could be getting calls and emails all day.

I can’t imagine how a person or team can keep track all of the orders and then deal with the follow up and tracking.

The worst is when people ask for swag and then three days later email and call for tracking. Then Fedex or UPS mess up on shipping and the person who ordered 3 t-shirts is freaking out.

Viviana has closet stock to ship out. She has to review all of the decks with her distributor, approve all of the proofs and send out tracking to all of the different people that ask her to place orders.

What did she say when you showed her the sites we have built?

I thought she was going to cry. She needs a store with pens, mouse pads, backpacks and other products related to school. As well as all of the apparel options college students like. Her school has students that are 18 and 45 so she needs a wide variety of options.

We can build her an amazing site with all of the products she needs.

I explained that she doesn’t have to do the orders anymore. She can send people to the site so they can order them self. They can use department codes if the school is paying for the products. I also showed her how they can give new students, graduating students and alumni gift cards to the store.

Now she can just pick out products and add products that people are requesting.

At the end she made a funny comment about how the store is so good it might put her out of job.

Somebody still needs to manage the store for the school but now she will enjoy her job and hopefully do other things for the school besides take orders and send tracking emails.