The Craig School of Business’s (CSB) student-run pop-up store returns this month, giving a new set of students a chance to develop their entrepreneurial skills throughout the semester.
The pop-up shop will take place on March 12 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the club booth area. It will feature clothing items such as T-shirts, crewnecks and hats designed by CSB students.
The pop-up is a part of the ENTR 155E “Managing the New Venture” course, taught by Akhil Kanodia, clinical professor of practice in entrepreneurship, which debuted in Fall 2024.
Kanodia believes the store is a great way to teach entrepreneurship as it allows students to temporarily run a business and learn the nuances of doing so.
“This kind of experiential learning is very, very impactful,” Kanodia said. “My goal for the students in this course is always for them to take away the knowledge, tools and confidence to run a small business.”
In the course, students are split into teams, including design, product, operations, finance and accounting, marketing, sales and an optional decor team.
Afterward, teams create new products, obtain trademark licensing approvals for original artwork, source products from licensed vendors or conduct sales and marketing for the pop-up store twice a semester.
As a class, students then vote on designs for clothing items, colors to use based on seasonal trends, sizes and prices, how much of an item to make and what marketing flyer to use.
This semester, Hayden Tarr, a business administration major, is the product team lead. His role includes sourcing a variety of products and comparing prices among different vendors.
So far, Tarr believes it has been a great experience and hopes to further improve his social skills, like networking and negotiating.
“It’s definitely been a unique experience and not something I’ve been exposed to in any other class,” Tarr said. “So it’s been fun to go out into the world away from campus and meet some different vendors.”
Much like a real business, Kanodia said students running the pop-up store still face their own set of challenges they must overcome, such as following licensing guidelines, limited vendor availability and timing.
Stephanie Garcia, a business major focusing on entrepreneurship, is part of the marketing team for the pop-up store. Two things her team struggled with were coordinating times to create content due to conflicting class schedules and not having the budget to create high-quality content.
For this, the group turned to campus resources like the library to rent camera equipment and to Kanodia, who pointed them to organizations around campus that can help promote the pop-up.
Despite the challenges, she believes it’s been rewarding to see the Fresno State community react to flyers around campus and engage with their posts on social media.
“It’s just like wow, we’re really doing it, and we have people interested in our pop-up shop,” Garcia said. “And the fact that we’re creating this together as a group, it’s just kind of surreal to me.”
Since the students host two pop-up stores during the semester, Kanodia hopes students learn from mistakes made during the first pop-up and start to think more strategically for the second date.
This is something Elizabeth Melgoza, also on the marketing team, already picked up on as the class wraps up production and promotion for this week.
“Hopefully with this first one, we’ll get a little bit more experience for the second pop-up,” Melgoza said. “But it has been stressful because we have to do this, this, and that, but it’s been a good experience.”
The second CSB pop-up store is expected to take place in late April or early May, according to Kanodia.
