Student-run business finally finds a home

In the fall, entrepreneur teacher Pamela Rijo challenged her business students at North Charleston High School to come up with a business plan and find a market niche.

They did, and they were so successful they were shut down.

Now, they've been offered a free building to sell their wares and have received the backing of businesswoman and public education advocate Anita Zucker.

The business venture started with a suggestion by one of the students in Rijo's class that they start selling Little Debbie snack cakes in the school cafeteria, which didn't offer a big variety of sweet treats.

The students pooled together $10 of their own money and bought six boxes of the snacks from a local grocery store. They sold the snacks for 50 cents and 75 cents and quickly more than doubled their investment.

They went back to buy more and on the first day tucked away a tidy profit of $75.

They then bought from a warehouse club where bulk products were less expensive, and they expanded their offerings. In just two weeks, their profit mushroomed to $580.

But like so many businesses, the students' venture got caught up in rules and regulations.

At first, students sold their treats in the cafeteria but were asked to sell elsewhere because of a conflict of interest over their unhealthy product line and selling in the cafeteria, Rijo said.

So the crafty students set up shop just outside the cafeteria. They operated there for two days, but were told they couldn't sell there either because food could be sold only in the cafeteria, Rijo said.

Without a venue, they were out of business.

That's when Amy Brunson stepped in.

Brunson handles career and technology education for Charleston County School District by matching up businesses with schools to create work-based learning opportunities for students.

She approached North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey and asked for a vendor's license so the students could sell on the street.

Summey, a strong supporter of the high school his children attended, went one better, telling her that the students could use a vacant city-owned building across from the school on Jenkins Avenue.

"Education prepares you for whatever you do in life," Summey told the students Thursday.

Just down the street from the high school sits the InterTech Group, a manufacturing conglomerate run by Zucker.

Brunson knocked on her door one day and walked away with Zucker's support for the city-school joint venture. Zucker offered to show students how to write a successful business plan and to analyze it for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

"If you are not educated and if you don't get a degree, you are not going to move forward," Zucker told the class Thursday. "You have to change the way you do things to find what works."

Students are now in the research phase of what they want to sell at their new venue, but the products can't compete with anything already sold in the Olde North Charleston neighborhood.

"We are not going to offer anything that's already here," Brunson said.

The experience already has paid off for her students, Rijo said.

"They can apply the skills they learn in this class at any business in Charleston or abroad," she said. "They have learned every aspect of running a business from profit and risks to accounting to basic math to how to dress and communicate appropriately."

Students don't normally look forward to school, but those in Rijo's class can't wait to get there every day.

"If I ever pursue a career in selling things, I can use this experience," ninth-grader Shavelle Williams said. "It was hard, but it was fun."