Student Enterprises open new store on campus

Rachel Summa, Campus Carrier Staff Writer

honey bee — Student Enterprises has opened a new store in the back of the Berry Bookstore. The store has had moderate success and serves as the first step towards establishing a permanent store in the future. The store offers a variety of items including sugar scrubs from Lavendar Mountain Dreams. Photos by Gabby Agan | Campus Carrier

The Berry College Student Enterprise team has expanded their horizons and established a physical store here on campus, located in the back corner of the school bookstore. Now, students, faculty and visitors will have on-hand access to Student Enterprise products during store hours.

“We wanted to have a permanent store front where the goods that we produced and the enterprises would be more accessible to students, faculty, staff, and the community,” sophomore Isabelle Hill, who serves as the General Manager for Seasons Harvest said.

The store sells many Student Enterprise commodities, including original beef, cheese, paperweights, Viking furniture items, succulents and Berry bees products such as bees wax lip balms and lotion bars. The store also includes items from the Oak Hill Gift Shop.

The store has experienced moderate success so far. Milton Chambers, the Operations Manager of Student Enterprises, noted this initial growth was largely because many families were recently on campus to help their students move in for the fall semester.

Chambers also added that the store appeals to students, because it includes products students can afford. The succulents especially have been popular, which sell at seven to eight dollars per plant.

Sophomore Ben Lord, student director of the Student Enterprises, believes the success will continue. Instead of hiring additional staff for the store, the Student Enterprises team runs the store, which Lord believes can add value to the products.

This poster, hanging in the store, describes the mission of the Student Enterprises.

“To me, that’s so much fun because when we chat with customers, we can talk about what we’ve done with it, and it actually adds value for people to come in and buy stuff from somebody who actually made the stuff,” Lorde said.

This new space within the bookstore is the first step towards expanding the Enterprises and their product availability.

“All along, the Enterprises have had a goal of establishing a free-standing store somewhere, so at this point we are not able to have the free-standing store, so we decided to do like a little pilot project for the store so the kids could keep up with inventories we needed to sell,” Chambers said.