Guest Blogger : Kayla D.

Most marketing students not only operate in DECA, but also run, assist and target customers to grow and maximize their sales and profit in their school business, often called a School Based Enterprise (SBE).  Marketing students strive to work hard in various areas of our businesses, creating merchandise, keeping track of orders, managing inventory, preparing and keeping track of financials and more.

Within our Orange HS Business & Marketing programs, we currently have three businesses…

• Orange Apparel Co – the back end of our retail line, where students design, make and source retail items
• Fort Orange – our brick and mortar location for our RETAIL line, located in the OOHS cafe
• Pioneer Peak – our brick and mortar location for our FOOD & BEVERAGE line; located inside of Fort Orange in the OOHS cafe

As students get involved, they can choose to work on various committees such as Food & Beverage, Retail, Digital Marketing & Financials, HR+PR+Communications, Merchandising and Social Media of Marketing. 

 Product Development: Food & Beverage

• Students who assist with food and beverages their job is to observe the stocks and keep track of how many packaged foods and cold beverages are in vendors so they don’t go lacking. Some beverages have to be brewed for customers to buy from. Prepared beverages  can include making coffees, cold brews, latte’s, hot chocolate and expressos. After making the beverages we have teachers test samples to taste our progress. Usually when making expresso’s  students have to grind and weigh coffee, usually when grinding coffee beans it should have a powdery appearance. Step 2 students usually would have to  distribute and tamp the  requested 1 or 2  amount shot by the customer. Step 3 students usually pull the requested shot and finally it would be ready for delivery. Sometimes students would have to train and assist other ongoing students in marketing to help make the beverages so that the business can run efficiently according to plan. 

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 Product Development: Retail

“A day in the life of Orange Retail Gurus”

•  In  the retail committee students’ job is to  train others and themselves to run a small business within the school on their own. Students working in retail would usually manage and organize merchandise,  improve office efficiency,  track recent & past data of inventory and also work with vinyl orders. Usually other committees operate the  register to expand their efficient business flow. In my opinion I believe I’ve made the right choice personally because working not only retail but doing other things keeps me prompted. This experience have taught me to prioritize my time , help the business more efficiently,   assisting with people’s needs, being on register and  preparing beverages .  I’ve witnessed the perfection of how the students here handle and manage transactions, apply marketing principles to boost up sales and overall shopping experience online and in person !!

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   Merchandising “Designing Dreams” 

• The students of merchandising detail the look of the store, the display cases and more, all of which change seasonally.  

Social Media: Click, post, engage!

“Unveiling the social media strategy here at Orange”

• The social media team here in my opinion does an excellent job on pushing and promoting their Coffee products and special traditional events that go on around our school. Our biggest following is on Instagram @OlentangyEntrepreNEERS and we use it to engage with our followers

HR +PR+ Communications Committee:

Beyond the scenes: “The Heart of Orange”

In HR and PR students work on advertising and promoting our businesses on the school news, Youtube & the Orange community. The committee balances  internal communications and manages the public image of Orange. 

Digital Marketing & Finance Committee

“ The decoding  of Digital marketing here at orange”

With digital marketing the committee works towards  explaining the committee’s successful determination and skill to perceive in the  digital marketing campaign, from planning to executing.  The students in the  committee learn how to  utilize analytics to measure campaign effectiveness, inaugurate data driven decisions and effectiveness. They also help manage our online store and financials, using our SQUARE point of sale system and our retail website, https://fortorange.square.site/

Thanks for reading! More to follow on all of our student committees!