The clock hits 10:13, and you rush to Champions Corner to try and be one of the first in line. This is something that most people can relate to: trying to get to the store before the line is out the door. Teacher Mark Scheese created Chelsea High School’s student store in 1999. It started as an apparel store for the students to buy shirts and clothing of all sorts, and it also included school supplies sold at retail prices or lower.

The items were selling well until about seven years into the business, and then they started to decline, so Scheese knew something had to be done differently.

“After leaving Chelsea High School for two years and continuing my career at Beach Middle School, I came back and the store still wasn’t doing well,” Scheese said. After some thinking, he was able to figure out more ways to bring in money and bring the store back to life.

By doing two fundraisers, he was able to sell all the apparel items to get his new idea into action. “I’m trying to provide a service to the students at a minimum price,” Scheese said. Scheeses’ whole idea behind opening the store was to help save money for students.

On the days that he doesn’t do any fundraising, he can sell healthy snacks in the store. “Nothing is prepared; it is all packaged,” Scheese said. He gets minimal profits but has plans for making sure the money goes to a good cause. The main vision he has for the store is to raise enough money to get laminated flooring for the kids and to raise enough so that when he leaves, the store can continue to be successful.

The laminated floor plan is to make the clean-up much easier for students. The flooring will be the remains of what they used in our hallways, and having these laminated floors in the store will also help out his fourth-hour business foundations class as they are the ones who are scheduled weekly with a partner to clean up the room and most importantly vacuum the carpet, which can be a pain due to how dirty it can get.

Scheese added that he would also want to supply two more big coolers for drinks in hopes of making enough profit to have TVs in the store for students to watch past sports games and any other shows that are school-appropriate.

“I’m trying to give students a better price; most of what I sell are things that they would buy anyway, like the gas station,” Scheese said. “And it’s good for the marketing students to be able to run the store to get experience on what it’s like to run a business.”

As you can tell, Scheese isn’t interested in the profits for himself and is thinking long-term about what he can do to better the school as well as the atmosphere for the kids once he retires. He hopes that the marketing class will be able to continue to run the store and wants to be a part of what running a real business is like.