Students Create Business for Good Cause

Junior Achievement students are taking care of business, and their friends.

Their business project this year is Hashtag Tees, a t-shirt business. One shirt says "#avonswag," the other says "#weareavon." For those unfamiliar with social media, the hashtag or "#" is used on Twitter to designate a topic people can find tweets by.

This year, 100 percent of the profits generated by sales of the t-shirts will be given to the families of Avon High students Kelly Aston and Scott Scarvelli. Aston is recovering from a stroke, and in a 2011 motocross accident.

That made things a little different for the Junior Achievement students than raising funds for charity.

"We know who they are and we want to support them," Pepin said.

Alex Habeeb, who is involved in keeping the books for the project, said that $1,200 had been raised as of Wednesday.

There's still time to order a t-shirt. The order form is attached here as a PDF. Download it, fill it out, and send it to kachert@avonlocalschools.org by Friday to get your own t-shirt.

The idea for t-shirts was being tossed around and Sierra Friend mentioned seeing Jersey Shore star Pauly D's Swagg t-shirt in his clothing line. It clicked.

"We were looking for something popular (in a theme)," said Bonnie Pepin.

Maggie Sullivan, who helped out with marketing by composing the letter to parents that went out with the order forms, designed the logo.

Will Karanovas remembered how his mom had made t-shirts for the football team, and had gotten a good deal from BGM Solutions in Warren, so he helped secure a deal for the hashtag tees.

It's been a learning experience from the beginning, students said.

Michelle Delaney said she'd been unsure whether the group could agree on what to do. "We had a lot of debates," she said. "There are a lot of different personalities."

But over the course of the project, she said, she saw the personalities become a team.

"We learned how much of business is just working with others," said Carina Chavez.

They also learned that an idea is just the beginning. Then comes the work, the i-dotting and the t-crossing. Teacher Todd Kacher applied the brakes more than once, reminding them that a business doesn't make money unless its done correctly.

"We had to do Power Points, business plans, mission statements, income statements, etc.," Karanovas said. "We couldn't just go along with what was in our heads. We had to put everything we were doing down on paper."

That documentation will be part of the presentation on the business the group will make at the regional Junior Achievement competition on May 2 at Cleveland State University.