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Cloudy with occasional showers this afternoon. High 79F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..
Tonight
Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch. Locally heavy rainfall possible.
The Student-Made Store specializes in handmade goods from current Elon students. The store has recently expanded to other colleges as well. [SUBMITTED PHOTO]
For two Elon graduates, the COVID-19 pandemic has some positive outcomes as they have had more time to dedicate to a business they started during their years as students, the Student-Made Store. Now, they’re working to make it their full-time gig.
Lindsay Reeth and Ryan McElhinney started the Student-Made Store in December 2017 as a pop-up shop event on campus.
McElhinney said he had started to get to know a few student artists on campus as early as his freshman year. When he heard that some of those friends were selling their art on shops like Etsy, he thought the Elon community could support their classmates by buying their art in person.
He thought it was an abstract goal, he explained, until his girlfriend, Reeth, said they should pursue the idea.
“He told me about the idea, and he kind of wrote it off,” Reeth explained. “I said ‘Wait, we can do this.’ … I think within a week we had a couple artists ready to go. … Before we knew it we were underway.”
The Student-Made Store hosted its first pop-up holiday shop that year at the Moseley Student Center.
“We put up fliers all around campus, we had our friends promote it to their friends and we were just taking a shot at this event to see if anybody would come,” McElhinney explained. “For many of our artists, it was their first time ever selling their art so, just like we went into it a little skeptical, they were also feeling that way.”
The event was a wild success, with the 15 artists involved selling more than $2,000 in products in just three and a half hours. Between 300 and 400 campus community members showed up.
“People loved hearing their stories and how they got into their art, and really wanted to support them,” he said.
Running on that momentum, the couple started planning for another pop-up event the next year. Again, the sale was a success. One artist at that event, a potter who was humble about his craft, sold out within the first 45 minutes of that event and had to run back to the studio to get more products.
Student art includes pottery, such as this, as well as clothing, jewelry and more. [SUBMITTED PHOTO]
Times-News
Student-Made Story, Times-News
“We had lost touch with a few artists who did the first even. I think out of those 15, maybe only five or six stayed with us for the second event, but we gained like 30 new artists on top of those. That had a big growth,” McElhinney said.
Since those pop-up shops, the Student-Made store has continued to grow. Reeth and McElhinney set up an online store and have made partnerships with the Elon Farmers Market and the university’s Campus Recreation department to sell at their events.
“People can buy things from Elon students and now even more students from other campuses all year round, which is a whole different style,” Reeth said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the businesses continued to grow.
Reeth and McElhinney both graduated from Elon in 2019 but continued to manage the Student-Made Store part-time as they pursued full-time careers. When the pandemic hit, however, they both lost those full-time jobs. According to Reeth, it was a blessing in disguise.
“We had a lot more time doing the things we loved,” Reeth said. “We just found ourselves spending more and more hours working on the store and building new ideas.”
“In the oddest of ways, COVID didn’t affect us in a bad way. It really kind of pushed our business because we had more time to focus on it and it also brought us the opportunity to connect people that weren’t connected on their college campuses. They were separated by quarantine but we were able to connect them through art,” she added.
McElhinney said the health crisis and shutdowns also allowed students more time to work on their art, just as the couple spent more time working on the business side of things.
The Student-Made Store currently has about 30 artists from Elon selling their work. During the COVID-19 season of growth for the business, Reeth and McElhinney added student artists from the University of South Carolina to their roster Aug. 1 and will launch artists from the University of Washington on Oct. 15.
The Student-Made Store specializes in handmade goods from current Elon students. The store has recently expanded to other colleges as well. [SUBMITTED PHOTO]
Times-News
Student-Made Store, Times-News
Several of the artists on the lineup also started making their art during the COVID-19 crisis to fill their time during quarantines, Reeth said.
“Out of our 30 South Carolina artists, about 20 of them started their art during COVID,” she said. “Every person we talked to was like ‘I just picked this up over COVID and I have 100 of these and I’d like to sell them.’”
Because of the growth, the couple said they hope to continue expanding their business.
“If we can pull this off, we want to do this full time,” Reeth said.
Because artists featured in the store must be current students, McElhinney explained that the business’ growth has not taken a steady increase, but instead has started over many times as new artist lineups are built each year as students graduate and move on.
“It’s a little like starting over each time with each new phase of it,” he said.
Profits from the art sales are split, with 80 percent going to the artist and 20 percent going to Reeth and McElhinney to upkeep the business. That 20 percent helps cover costs of the online store, marketing, fees for selling at events and to pay the couple for their time invested in the store, they said.
McElhinney said this profit share helps introduce student artists to the business side of art and prepares them for what a future career in art might look like.
“One of our main goals is to give people tangible, practical experience in making a business out of their art,” he said. “A big part of that is learning the business side like how to account for costs, how to price accordingly. We help some of our artists with so many other aspects of business as well like marketing, with pricing, with how to reach new demographics, new product lines to go into.”
Some of the artists working with the Student-Made Store are selling so much product that they could pursue their art full time, McElhinney said.
The Student-Made Store continues to be a passion for Reeth and McElhinney, even as they pursue it as a full time career.
“I think my favorite thing about what we do is really meeting the coolest people … and finding out what they do that’s the most authentic thing about them,” Reeth said. “Giving them a platform to spread that to other people is huge. It’s infectious. When you talk to someone about what they do and they’re so passionate about something, you can’t help but want to be a part of it. That’s something Ryan and I love to be a part of and love to help people with.”
McElhinney added that he loves “the spirit of entrepreneurship and the freedom that gives people” that the store enables.
