I had mentioned on our facebook page that we were entering
our 23rd year. Boy, that time went fast.
Someone messaged me asking how everything began. So I
thought I’d share a little bit about our story.
It was August of 1991 when Terri went shopping for our son,
Nick’s, school supplies. Like so many people, she grabbed that list and went
off to the store. We didn’t have WalMart’s in Milwaukee back then so the first destination
was Target. She couldn’t find everything on the list so the next stop was
K-Mart. Not good. Office Depot? Office Max? Walgreens? It didn’t matter. No one
carried all the things needed.
Back in the 90’s, there was an organization named SHOPA that
catered to all the major suppliers. They were the ones who selected colors for
the upcoming sales year. Purple colored folders were available in 1990 but not
in 1991.
Terri followed a mother and daughter from store to store
looking for that elusive purple folder. Finally, the mother grabbed a folder
from the shelf and a Sharpie. She wrote “purple” on the folder and gave it to
her daughter with the instruction, “She can take it up with me”, referring to
the teacher.
Of course, the little girl was in tears realizing she was
the only kid in the school without a purple folder. Which actually wasn’t the
case in the end.
So Terri came home, sat down at the kitchen table and said, “There
has to be a better way for families to enjoy summer than getting into arguments
at the store.” And so, School-Pak took root.
We spoke to our son’s principal at St. Catherine’s school in
Milwaukee about
providing a kit with everything on the teachers’ lists. She agreed to let us
give it a try and also let us use her name with some other Archdiocesan
schools.
That first year we worked with 7 schools. We still provide
kits to St. Catherine’s, St. Monica’s, St. Jude’s, St. Mary Visitation and Holy
Family. Unfortunately the other 2 closed, as so many Catholic schools do in
large cities.
Buying product was the real issue. If we bought it at
retail, we couldn’t make any money selling it to the parents. So we started
searching for sources. Our other son, Jason, made contact with a school supply
company in Skokie, IL, Swenson’s School Supplies. Karen Swenson
was kind enough to help us get started by providing items at a very minimum
markup.
We also started shopping the sales at the stores, but we
knew that couldn’t work for long. We needed to find a way to buy direct from
manufacturers. Our first contact was with Crayola and it was an interesting
start.
To be continued
Gene
Gene
