Setting up a school store is a wise move for any educational institution. It can become an immediate and significant source of revenue that bolsters your school’s budget for generations. However, such a venture won’t succeed if administrators don’t follow the best implementation practices.
Fortunately, we have some helpful tips to ensure that setting up your school store is seamless and prosperous for years to come.
Recruit The Right Team To Run The Store
First and foremost, a school store can’t viably operate without recruiting people to run it.
Here’s where your store can help your school on multiple layers.
Sure–there are more brass-tax benefits, such as increased profits and bolstered brand recognition. Yet, a school store’s most meaningful advantage is how it can be an educational experience for your students.
Letting your students manage the books, handle customer service, and oversee logistics will build their practical life skills while developing discipline and accountability.
Find a teacher or administrator to supervise to limit youthful mishaps–but recruiting your students to handle the rest of store responsibilities is a winning opportunity.
Use Cutting-Edge Systems
Your school store’s success depends significantly on the systems you implement. We’re not saying you need to sink your entire budget into your school store. Instead, you must invest wisely in dynamic tools that yield profits.
For instance, implementing a modern POS system with a cloud-based setup is far easier to use than the cash registers of yesteryear. The newer tech is affordable, robustly secured, and offers flexible capabilities that streamline sales while empowering your student staff to perform their duties at a high level.
Sell Merchandise That Students Want
One of the most straightforward concepts of economics is there must be a significant demand to meet your supply.
There are more nuts and bolts items that students need, like pens, crayons, pencils, paper, binders, and books. Yet, if you want to maximize the value of your school store, go above and beyond those essentials with more unique product offerings, such as:
- Staples staplers
- Adhesive laptop stands
- Magnetic notebooks
- Waterproof paper
For further inspiration, examine Amazon’s catalog of cool school supplies. The more memorable and one-of-a-kind the products in the school store, the more word of mouth will spread between parents and students.
Market Your School Store Online
Another professional life skill your students can learn from working in your school store is online or digital marketing.
Your young staffers are already highly literate social media users. They can put those skills to the test as they create and publish posts to promote your school’s brand and unique products.
Plus, your students can learn core SEO fundamentals, blogging techniques, and video editing–all components of online marketing.
After all, in today’s landscape, internet marketing is a must. Without it, the Amazons of the world will sop up all of your potential business. By using this vital branding and advertising tool to your advantage, your store will continue to turn profits school-year-after-school-year.
Want to set your school store up for success? Learn about Store4Schools’ perfect student store software today!