Is Being a Fresh Prints Campus Manager Worth It?

You’re probably here because we offered you a job. First of all, congratulations! We send offers to a very low % of people who apply for us. Harvard’s acceptance rate is 5%. Who’s not elite now, haters?

Jk. Who’s beefing with a custom apparel company?

Second of all, good question. If you're investing your time and energy into a job as a student, you have to completely understand what you’re getting yourself into and if it even makes sense in your life.

So let’s break this down.

What does a Fresh Prints Campus Manager (CM) do?

Fresh Prints is a custom apparel company that was founded by 2 college students. Fresh Prints Campus Managers are college students who run Fresh Prints on their campus. They build the business by reaching out to people who need merch, creating custom designs with our art team, recommending products, placing orders and maintaining a client base. They get a % of the revenue they generate.

If you want to hear it from Campus Managers, you can do that here.

What do Fresh Prints Campus Managers look like?

We’ve had 1000+ Campus Managers work with us since 2009. Over 78% of them come in as Sophomores and leave once they graduate. 

You’d think business majors would make the majority of them. We did too. Turns out, CMs come from all kinds of majors including medical, engineering, entrepreneurship, musical theater, and many more.

‘It’s because you learn so much more than how to sell custom shirts,’ Cailey Merulla, a Campus Manager at Montclair State University, told us. ‘When you go to an interview and say something like ‘I run a custom apparel business on campus,’ you’re telling them that you’re someone who takes action and makes things happen, you know? They might not care about you selling shirts but they will be interested in your traits that made it happen.’

Campus Managers learn professional skills they can apply anywhere regardless of the career path they choose. It’s one of the reasons we see that variety.

What kind of clients do Fresh Prints Campus Managers work with?

The clients of our Campus Managers range from student organizations like fraternities, sororities, and clubs to local businesses, communities, and even major corporate clients outside the campus.

Riccelo Guidorizzi, our Campus Manager studying Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, has recently started to venture out of his campus for clients.

‘I’ve been a Campus Manager since 2019 so I feel like I’m at a good capacity with collegiate clients. I’m now focusing on corporate contacts with the full-time team at Fresh Prints! Bigger fish to fry and I’m learning a lot in the process.’

To quote our CEO, Josh Arbit, on stuff he tells our team a lot when we’re hesitating with dreaming big is, ‘You know what’s cool? We can literally do anything.’ And he’s right. As far as custom apparel goes anyways. Sororities and fraternities make up most of our collegiate clientele but why stop at them? Your client’s cousin needs custom shirts for his brother’s bar mitzvah? We can do it.

What does the day-to-day of being a Campus Manager look like?

The Campus Manager experience is not like most other student job experiences. Yes, #notlikeothergirls but make it corporate. 

But we’re really not. Most student jobs require you to be at a set place on set hours. At Fresh Prints, the majority of our Campus Managers create their own schedules and work off their phones. As long as they have Wi-Fi, they’re good to go.

‘Majority of my work was texting clients,’ Casey Colquitt, a former Mercer Campus Manager said, ‘You reach out to people, follow up, place art requests and orders on their behalf. I did all of that on my phone as I went about my day.’

While some of them set aside ~1 hour a day to do everything, most of them do their tasks the way Casey did.

‘I’d be walking between classes texting, ‘hey, do you guys have any philanthropy events coming up?’ Or you know, ‘what is your next order? I just wanna get an idea’ If they text me back and I get to class 10 minutes early I quickly put in a design request,’ said Emily Klevan, a former Campus Manager at Elon, ‘By the time I finish my classes, the designs are ready to show and that’s how it usually goes.’

‘I think it really depends on the person and what their schedule looks like,’ Danny Barry, a former Campus Manager at Fordham said, ‘I don’t like waking up early so a lot of my work was done in the afternoon. I liked that and my clients didn’t mind so it worked out!’

Paul, a Campus Manager at the University of North Georgia, prefers texting people in the morning, going about his day, and then getting back to them again in the afternoon. ‘You set aside the time that works for you and just do what needs to get done. The flexibility is a huge part of why this works out well for me.’

What do Campus Managers get from being Campus Managers?

Students are a huge part of what we do. Our company was started by college students in the basement of their fraternity. We work with student Campus Managers and we sell custom apparel to students. Most of our hires are also fresh graduates. With all these people, we’ve been able to go from being ~100K to a 20M dollar company in just a few years.

When a group of people is such a huge part of your community, you simply don’t take them for granted. 

A low-quality meme for high-quality people

Our VP of Sales and Co-Founder, Jacob Goodman said, ‘The biggest barrier that stops most college students from starting a business is, of course, the financial risk. So we asked ourselves how we could take that burden off their shoulders. We provide the capital, technology, supply chain, training, etc. We take care of that part. Our Campus Managers then provide the hustle, network, marketing, and sales to power the business on their campus.’

Danny describes it as seeing business lessons in action. ‘People look at it as a sales job and it is definitely a part of it but there’s also a lot more - you’ll get to see the logistics and the creative side of the business, for example. If you’ve ever studied business you’ll get to see and be a part of all the concepts in action and learn from it.’

Aside from learning how to pitch, network, and manage her time better, Gabby Daher, a Campus Manager at Loyola, is most grateful for a specific skill she picked up with us.

‘COVID was supposed to destroy our businesses, right? Sororities and fraternities do custom apparel for events but events weren't happening. The supply chain was on halt for what seemed like forever too. We were supposed to die out but we instead switched gears and mitigated those issues. And we were actually able to do it. Knowing I was able to not only survive but thrive in that time is a great feeling.’ Gabby said.

‘My ability to talk to people and get my ideas across saw major improvement.’ Emily told us, ‘I could talk to people before too but I wasn’t the best at it in a professional setting. I saw that difference in me when I started leading my client calls and felt confident doing it. Before that, I’d fumble and get very uncomfortable but with the help of my manager, I started getting it down.’

The business skills you learn with us grow with the growth of your business too. 

‘If you're working with 5 clients in your first semester that means you're learning how to build relationships and make your first few orders successful. You’re learning the basics. Once your client base expands to 30 - 40 clients and you’ve generated 100K in revenue, what you’re learning and working on shifts too. It becomes more about things like how to maintain your relationships, what’s a sustainable way of scaling your business, you know, without affecting the quality of service. And as you grow, Fresh Prints is right there with you. There are many 100K+ generating Campus Managers and they know how to help you set fresh goals to get there if you want to.’ Riccelo put it beautifully.

‘There are so many bullshit internships out there. You really don't learn a lot because you're not actually doing what the full-time people there are doing.’ Emily told us.

‘If you graduate with a high GPA, there will be many other people who also graduated with a high GPA. But if you talk about experience, maybe they waitressed a bit, interned, and worked some administrative job. A lot of experiences with little substance. But if you worked as a Campus Manager and a recruiter asked something like, ‘tell me about a time you tackled a big challenge’ you’ll have legitimate answers. You won’t be bullshitting or exaggerating because you really did tackle challenges when you set up your own business and that’s worth something!’

Gabby also believes that the position can be beneficial in different ways. ‘I don’t think you have to be passionate about apparel or business to want to become a CM. It’s a position that pushes you to learn about yourself,’ she said. ‘How you handle rejection when clients don’t want to work with you, how you handle executing major tasks or making mistakes or working with clients that are kinda mean - you have to remember you’re not always gonna work with people you like! Stuff like that is uncomfortable but you’re pushing yourself to grow from that discomfort.’

Sofie Levinson, who was a Campus Manager at UMD and now works as a Business Development Manager, realized that she was ahead of her colleagues because of her experience working with Fresh Prints.

‘I did many orders on campus. Some of those orders faced issues. People wanted changes last minute or needed their order delivered way earlier than they first realized and things like that. All those issues I tackled kinda desensitized me to crises,’ she said, ‘I learned how to figure things out in those times and looking around in college, my friends were terrible at dealing with that stuff. I don’t blame them! It’s normal for 18 to 20-year-olds to not know how to do that stuff. But I mastered that skill at that age and found myself ahead of them professionally. That was very valuable.’

Aside from personal and professional skills, you also get paid based on how much work you put in. All Campus managers earn a % of the revenue they generate.

‘When you work behind the counter or behind a desk, you make minimum wage. In North Carolina, that’s $7.50. In those jobs, you can either work really hard, or be the most average worker ever, and you're gonna make the same amount of money.’ Emily said, ‘But when you are a good Campus Manager and you're on top of things and you're doing everything you should be doing, your paycheck is going to represent that.’

Can you be a Fresh Prints Campus Manager?

Good question. It’s important to first know if this opportunity is right for you. Here are 4 questions you should ask yourself to help you decide:

• Are you a college student in the USA?
• Did reading through this article get you excited at any point?
• Do you want tangible skill-building experiences?
• Do you want to connect with more peers on campus?

If you say yes to all of that, we’re getting close! Next, what do you need to have to qualify?

• A knack for learning new things
• Drive 
• Creativity 

You’ll notice that those are all traits - not skills or experiences. That’s by design. We don’t expect our Campus Managers to fully understand how to do it all or be great at everything before they apply. That would defeat the whole purpose of the program! We look for capable and driven students and train them to become competent individuals.

‘At Fresh Prints, you learn as you go. You’re hired, you train and you’re already building client relationships and placing orders,’ Casey told us, ‘It’s faster than what you’re used to and it’s okay because if you screw up, you’re encouraged to learn from it and move past. If you do a great job, you’re celebrated too.’

‘The company gives you the resources and trusts you to do what you have to do.’ Casey explained, ‘I remember realizing, ‘Oh, they trust me enough to make these decisions and think I’m smart enough to do it. Okay, I’ll try,’ which is often new for a college kid.’ This realization helped her get started on a path that eventually helped her land a full-time role at Fresh Prints.

On whether everyone can be a Campus Manager, Danny, another one of our Campus Managers-who-did-so-well-we-hunted-them-down-and-hired-them, said, ‘The job is definitely not for everyone. But if you feel like it’s the right fit for you then it is by far the best opportunity in college. If you're willing to learn and you do things quickly, you really don't need to know that much. Because you can always find out whatever you need to find out. Let’s say you don't know how one shirt printing method differs from another shirt printing method and which one you should do for an order. If you're quick and willing to learn you’ll use Fresh Prints to figure out the answer and keep moving.’

There you have it. If you love learning new things, and are driven, and creative - we want you!