Around 2014, Slinger High School Principal Phil Ourada was walking through the halls with marketing teacher Kim Smessaert.
“I pointed at a closet and I said, ‘Kim, that’s where the school store’s gonna go,’” he recalled on The School Perceptions Podcast. “It was truly a storage closet.”
More than a decade later, that closet is now known as The Rookery – a nod to the school’s owl mascot. It has become one of the high school’s hallmarks, an effort that connects the community to the school and the school to the community.
“It’s this huge centerpiece of our school and literally in the center of our school. And then also I think it’s a centerpiece for our community … when I give tours and talk to people, if you want Slinger gear, you get it from the Rookery,” Ourada said.
It also serves as a piece of career education for the students who help Smessaert run it.
“If you can provide a moment of that (face-to-face communication), even if it is a 30-minute little shift that you’re doing, sometimes it’s the most quiet moments that end up being the biggest lessons that you learn in life,” Smessaert said.
A classroom beyond the classroom
Students in DECA and Smessaert’s marketing class work in the store and have the chance to offer feedback on designs or vendor submissions.
“It’s their first job for a lot of these kids,” Smessaert said. “I’ll get the occasional email over summer, ‘I’m applying for a job … can I put the store down?’ Absolutely, now you’ve had some work exerpeince.”
Quickly, it develops into a team atmosphere.
“You can just tell that they enjoy being in the Rookery, they enjoy the process, they enjoy being part of something,” Ourada said. “I don’t know if they really know if they’re part of something, but Kim and I know they’re part of something.
“When you’re a teenager, you’re just kind of living in the moment sometimes, but I think as you self-reflect as you get older, like we all do, you look back and it’s like, ‘That had an impact on me, down the line it will make a positive impact on me in some sort of fashion, whether it’s in college or the workforce or whatever it might be.’”
The requirements of working in a retail setting with both peers and adults gives students lessons they can’t get in a classroom, including “how to interact with other humans,” Ourada said.
“There’s not a lot of opportunities like this day in and day out … where they have that opportunity to have those relationships and work on those soft skills,” he said.
Build the brand
Smessaert recalled what it was like to find Slinger Owls gear before the store took off.
“Every time I would go to a game or some kind of an event, there was somebody that had a little Tupperware bin and then set up a table and threw a couple of things out on the table,” the former professional marketer said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, this just seems like we’re missing something. There’s a need here that we’re not satisfying overall.”
With the support of Ourada, a mid-2010s referendum that helped invest in the store, and a strong DECA club that is part of staffing it, Smessaert found the need was even bigger than she could have imagined.
“A place where they could show their pride, a place where it was a tradition for them, as well,” she said. “And it doesn’t end when a season ends – if you’re ordering sports apparel or something like this, it just is a kind of fixture.”
Over the years, she’s kept up with what college apparel stores are doing and pays attentions to trends in the fashion world to understand what people want to wear.
“You can’t look at yourself like you’re just a spirit store,” Smessaert said. “You have to look at yourself as like, “I’m trying to stay within a trend and I’m an apparel shop.’”
She encouraged others interested in starting a store to learn from those who have already been there. That’s what she did back when Slinger was getting started, visiting a nearby school with an established store.
“You have to tap into some mentors, you have to get out there, go visit other schools, see what they’re doing, see how their space is set up,” she said.
Ultimately, though, the key is understanding what need you’re filling.
“Just remember the why behind it and how you can build it,” she said.
Trust the kids
One piece of that “why” in Slinger is the students.
“This is such an instrumental part to why it works is that I wanted the kids to be in the process every step of the way,” Smessaert said.
When they were getting the store established, that meant asking the students what to call the store and what it should sell. Those students wanted to hear from their peers, too, doing surveys to better understand the demand.
“(The process) has to start with leaning on somebody else that has done this, and then two, trusting your kids,” Smessaert said. “Sometimes teens get a bad rap that they’re just young, they’re immature, they’re just kind of treading water through life … but they know a lot and they’re smarter than sometimes people give them credit for.”
To hear more from Ourada and Smessaert and get the inside scoop on the how Slinger’s school store found success, listen to The School Perceptions Podcast.
The School Perceptions Blog and Resource Center features the voices of our team members. This post was written by Scott Girard, Project Manager.