Monday, March 8, 2010

Student-run store to raise money for local non-profits

BY TRAVIS FICK
Managing Editor

Students in the Saint Mary’s University entrepreneurship class will soon open a new student run store where profits go directly to non-profit organizations.

Due to the closing of the Movie Nest, entrepreneurship majors were left without a place to apply what they learned in class to a real life business.

“The Movie Nest was a good first step in the evolution of the new entrepreneurship major,” said senior Kevin Hein. “For a number of years, it (the Movie Nest) served its purpose of having students run a small business as part of their entrepreneurship class.”

Over the past few years, the Movie Nest saw a decline in sales due to the rise of Red Box and the growth of personal DVD collections, said Hein. Hein said that with the success of the Cardinal Pride t-shirts, as well as the release of the new Red Card, the entrepreneurship class believed it would help to have a centralized location to facilitate the student-run business venture.

The store, which has yet to be named, will be located to the left of the SMU Barnes and Noble Bookstore located in the Michael H. Toner Student Center basement. “The store will work better than the Movie Nest,” said senior Pam Stanton. “The Movie Nest was very limited in the products that it sold, considering it only sold movies. By providing a student ‘store,’ in which its products will vary each semester, we will provide more innovation of our products so that it is more appealing to the student body.”

The student body will be able to decide what the store is named by submitting possible names in a naming contest from March 15-19. The winning name will be decided by the entrepreneurship class in late March.

The store will open next fall.

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