CCHS students stage corporate takeover of The Comet Shop

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

What started out as a unit in one of Dana Sullivan’s Charles City High School business classes is becoming a student-led local industrial complex.

The ultimate goal — to see the entire population of Charles City decked out in Comet Orange and Black.

“It really just morphed into something much bigger than we thought it was going to be,” said Sullivan, the instructor for the business class known as The Comet Shop. “Everything you can think of, they have to do it — and sometimes they get mad at me, because I won’t do it for them.”

Sullivan explained that what initially was unit in a freshman-sophomore business class last year, turned into something more when the students wanted to formulate their own business class, based on what they’d learned from that unit.

The business was initially The Comet Store, operated by Tammy Quade, and dealt in a variety of Charles City Comet branded items such as sweatshirts, T-shirts, hats and other accessories.

There was no physical address — much of the Comet merchandise was stored in totes at the middle school. Quade would haul it out before events, set it up, then bring back what didn’t sell and put it away. Sometimes she stored the items in her garage.

Quade said last year that ultimately she would like to get CCHS students involved. She said they could learn inventory and learn about wholesale and retail sales.

“My hope is to eventually be able to hand it all over to the school,” Quade had said then. “Maybe I’d assist the kids as they get it going.”

That’s exactly what happened. Students now operate every aspect of the business. The Comet Shop is now located in the CCHS business classroom, and the students intend to expand to a downtown location soon.

“Right now, it’s just in the business department, but as it expands we hope it can appeal to students interested in textiles, or accounting, marketing, and so many other things,” Sullivan said. “It should be a multi-faceted, continuing project in our district.”

The 30-or-so students in grades 9-12 indeed do everything, just as Sullivan said, from design, to inventory, setting prices, advertising, sales, accounting, marketing and customer service.

Sullivan said that this generation of students is surprisingly adept when it comes the technological aspects of today’s business world.

“I’m amazed at how much some of these students know, that I don’t know,” Sullivan said. “Some students created some online commercials for us, and they look like legitimate TV commercials.”

The Comet Shop has a board of directors, which includes administrators, school board members and some community members. It follows a corporate model, where each student oversees a different aspect of the business, and each department head must report to the board.

The class is for credit at a designated time each day, and Sullivan said it meets multiple standards across the business field.

“It’s like walking into a shop, and they have to sit down every day and determine what needs to be done,” she said.

The students still bring items to sell at school events, and have what they call pop-up sales, which are scheduled sales events at predetermined locations. The next one is called “Coffee & The Comet Shop” which will be at Aroma’s next Saturday, Feb. 6, from 9-11 a.m.

“We know that a lot of people are at Aroma’s early on Saturday mornings, so we thought we could get a lot of attention there,” said sophomore Claire Eckenrod, one of the student entrepreneurs. “We thought it would be a good idea as a way to get the word out.”

The event at Aroma’s will feature the debut of The Comet Shop’s “Comets Against Cancer” items it will be selling in February — which is Cancer Awareness Month — and a portion of the sales will be donated to the American Cancer Society.

Eckenrod said The Comet Shop has vastly increased its inventory beyond sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats. They now sell Comet-branded flags, glasses, cups, blankets, jackets, sweaters, hoodies, umbrellas and more. Anyone interested in learning what the Comet Shop has to offer can visit The Comet Shop page on Facebook.

The students are aggressively looking for a downtown retail location, and have already walked through five different potential spots with real estate agents. They have narrowed it down to two spots, both currently empty and move-in ready, and they hope to have a place set up within the next couple of months.

“I envision this as being a store, up-and-running, during the school year for credit, and then maybe as a summer job for students over the summer,” Sullivan said. “I’d like it to be open year-round.”

Eckenrod said she and the other students have learned much about operating a business in a short period of time.

“I’ve actually learned a lot,” she said. “In the beginning, I was nervous about us, as students, taking the whole thing over, because it seemed like it might become a disaster.”

It hasn’t been a disaster, Eckenrod said, and in fact, it’s been quite the opposite.

“It’s actually been going really smoothly, as we’ve created the departments,” she said. “Everyone works on what they like to be working on, and we get more done, faster.”

She said she is looking forward to having a location downtown.

“I’m hoping we can get a permanent set-up, so that this can become a permanent thing,” Eckenrod said.