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Kihei Charter Merchandise

Tihani Arbogast

Junior Seminar

9/28/18

Preface
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My junior project for school year 2018-19 is designing merchandise for Kihei Charter

High School to help the athletic department with funds. My partner and I both enjoy drawing and

creating things, so we came together and formed the idea to benefit the school and give us a

challenge. Our original idea was to create merchandise for Kihei Canoe Club, however after

some discussion and help from faculty, we changed it to benefit the school. We are going to

design class shirts for the juniors and seniors, and athletic wear. The funds made from selling the

merchandise will go to the athletic department.

My personal connection to this project is pretty simple. I have been drawing since I was a

child, and doing random free draws was something I was good at. Back in March, I started

designing the MIL Paddling jersey for this school year. It wasn’t easy, but I really enjoyed it.

The idea of making something my friends and teammates would be happy about was a real eye

opener for me. So finding out my partner was interested in the same thing was exciting.

Our project is designed to benefit the school. The specific parts being the athletic

department by helping with expensives. The people that will benefit would be the students. We

are designing clothes for them to purchase and wear. The class shirts are for the juniors and

seniors to wear and represent their graduating class. I feel our project needs to be done because it

is giving my partner and I a great opportunity to learn new skills and it benefits our classmates. It

is unique because we are using our own creative ideas and the ideas of our peers to create

something everyone is happy with. We want to design something unique to the students, and to

the school.

Introduction
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My driving question is “what could I design to help Kihei Charter athletics with profits?”

We are answering this question with creating merchandise to sell. This project is important

because it benefits many different people and the school. For my partner and I, it is important to

us because it provides a new set of challenges and opens up opportunities to learn new things. I

know the athletic department is always in need of money for equipment, taking the team places,

ect.

One of the major things I personally hope to accomplish is to create clothes that everyone

likes and is happy with. I would feel like we fully completed our project if everyone was happy

with the outcome and still manage to help raise money for the school. I also really want to

simply gain some new experiences and have a fun time while completing this project. Overall, I

genuinely hope to become better at designing clothes, and learn more about marketing and

selling items.

There are many different concepts we are covering in our project. The first being we

need to design something that is clear and well delivered that it can be used for the designs.

Messy drawings and unclear lines may make it unusable. Another concept we need to nail down

is having good sales skills. We may be designing the merchandise, but selling it is where our

project is most weighted. So getting people excited about the clothes and advertising them in a

way that everyone will want to buy is important.

I would say one of the bigger concepts we need to take into consideration is marketing.

Advertising does play a roll with marketing, but it's the execution in marketing that counts. So to

try and have the most profits as possible, we are approaching the selling part in many different

ways. Our main source of income is naturally from the students. However there are other people

that may be interested in our stuff. For example tourists, who always like to take home a Maui
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souvenir. So to sell to the tourists we are planning to sell our athletic wear at fourth Friday, in

hopes to get a different audiences attention and sell more stuff.

Some 21st century skills we will be using are communication skills, thinking and

problem solving, ect. I have been using communication skills for conducting our interviews, and

to work together with planing out things accordingly. Since we are creating merchandise to help

with funds, it is taking a problem and finding a solution. We are also using financial, economic

and business literature. Selling something and making money is how an entrepreneur starts their

business. So we are using business skills and applying it to our project. Our information skills are

being hightened because of our technolgy use. From making websites, to reading news articles

about our topic we will be using lots of infromation skills.

Our interpersonal skills are being tested by having to work with many different teams of

people. From the school kids to the community. Altough we have been relying on the facultys

help a lot, we are using self-directional skills to set up meetings, and get our designs done. Our

global awareness skills are being used by recognizing that people have different ideas and we are

asking for thier ideas and designs. Our civic literacy and engagement skills are being used by

being involved with the school, and local organizations.

Doing a project with selling and making profits comes with many possible setbacks. For

example we may end up not being able to sell enough of our merch, so there are extras. We may

not be able to raise enough money to pay for the manufacturing, so we pay out of pocket. There

is also the chance that we redesign the clothes 10 or more times. Of course we hope that none of

this happens, however there is always the possibility.

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What we plan to turn in for evaluation would be of course samples of the merchandise.

Along with a website for the athletic teams/ department. We also plan on making a tri fold poster

board with some of the steps we went through along the way.

Annotated Bibliography

Tihani Arbogast

Ms. Lindsey

Junior Seminar

28 September 2018

What could I design to help Kihei Charter athletics with profits?

Bond, Ronald L. “Finding the Right Price for Your Retail Products.” Entrepreneur,

Entrepreneur, 25 May 2008, www.entrepreneur.com/article/193986.

This article is about selling your merchandise for a fair price. They talk about all the

things you need to consider, like how much it took manufacture the merch, and lots of

other variables. They also have a section called "the ethics of markup". This mentions

how you should price your items so you make profit.

Although this seems like a relaible article to me, I think it is a little out of date. Since it

was published back in 2008. So if they did a little updating I believe it would be a lot

more reliable and have even more helpful information.

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Caramanica, John. “The Shrinking Space Between Band T-Shirt and High Fashion.” The

New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Aug. 2018,

www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/arts/music/popcast-merch-fashion.html.

This is a Podcast on the New York Times website, where two men talk about

merchandise with musicians. There is also a small article below which sums up the

popcast. The two men talk about how merchandise is an important part of the music

business and the fans. They then talk about how Kanye West has taken merchandise to a

higher fashion stage.

I feel this podcast is a reliable source because these two men seem to have a lot of

knowledge about the topic, and have lots of useful information. They seem to be very

connected and have a good connection to the topic.

Kappel, Mike. “9 Sales and Marketing Tips for Startups.” Entrepreneur, 25 Jan. 2017,

www.entrepreneur.com/article/284271.

This article gives tips about sales and marketing for people who don't have a lot of

experience with it. Some of the tips they give is to listen to your customer. Another tip is

to advertise from multiple angles. It explains that people may not need your product at

the moment.

This article is reliable and helpful because we are trying to sell a product. So having tips

with how to sell items and make profits is helpful. Since our customers/ consumers are

the students, and whoever in the community, we need different ways of advertising our

merch.
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Lowenthal, Ben. “The State of Aloha.” Kahana Shoreline Hardening Project Runs into

Opposition | News, Sports, Jobs - Maui News, 27 July 2018,

www.mauinews.com/opinion/columns/2018/07/the-state-of-aloha-49/.

This is an article posted about how products cannot use certain words or phrases in their

advertisement or packaging. A popular phrase that can't be used is "made in Hawaii". It is

against the law to keep, offer, display or expose for sale any food item with that on it. In

order to actually have that on there, the product needs to be at least 51% made in the

state.

I think this is a reliable source because it uses many different facts about marketing

merchandise, and some of the unfortunate events where people find the packaging

misleading. So it is very important to be careful with how you advertise and market your

product.

McGregor, Beth. Personal source. Bethfmcgregor@gmail.com , (808) 250-8389

“Pricing.” A Makebelieve Company, amakebelieve.com/pages/pricing.

This website is for “A Makebelieve Company” which is a screen printing and graphic

design production. They make their own custom items, and make customers their own

stuff. On their website, they have a “pricing” tab, which gives people an idea of how

much it would cost to have a personal item made. There is also a tab where you can see

what they make and sell.

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Overall, I think this company and website is reliable because they are a Maui based

company that emphasizes they make only quality items. They are very welcoming in the

sense that they want to work with customers, and make something special for them. This

is a good place to start with helping produce our merchandise.

Printing, Maui Screen. “Screen Printing Just For You!” Maui Screen Printing,

www.mauiscreenprinting.com/.

This is the website of Maui Screen Printing, the company that manufactures Kihei

Charters sports teams outfits right now. On their website, they give examples of what

they can make for you, and how they are also helping the environment. They say they use

3 recycled plastic bottles in the material of the shirts. They also support groups like

"Allmade" and the "Global Orphan Project".

Since this company has already been creating Kihei Charters jerseys, they would be a

good contender to contact. Also, they are reliable because if I was to interview one of the

owners, I could get to learn about the actual process of screen printing, and how they

incorporate their company with real world issues.

Resources and Activities

For our project we are going to need a lot of supplies. People and material items included.

There are many steps to our project, the first being to design our actual merchandise. So lots of

paper and clean designs would most likely be best to help the person making our stuff. We also

need a lot of people and materials to make our car wash. From hoses, soap, towels, ect. Right
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now, we have about 20 people willing to volunteer and help with the car wash. We also have

around 30 interested in our Panda Fundraiser.

Budget

Unfortunately this project is very costly. So we have come up with multiple ways to raise

the money. The first being our car washes. We have scheduled two, one in November and

February. Our plan is to raise a minimum of $700 during each car wash. The money we make

from the car washes goes towards the manufacturing of the merchandise, unless the school fronts

us some money. If that happens, we use the car wash funds to pay back the school as well as the

manufacturing. We have also set up a Gofundme. On there we are trying to raise around $500,

simply for extra help if we need it. As of right now we plan on doing a Panda Fundraiser to pay

back the school if they decide to help with the car wash downpayment.

Timeline

Our time line is going to be very long and complicated to complete this in an orderly

fashion. Here is what we have so far:

October

- Finish designs

- Do our panda fundraiser (Fall Break or week after)

- Meet with Ms. Lindsey (First or second week in the new building)

November

- Begin documenting what we are doing

- Car wash on the 24th

- Meet with Ms. Lindsey the 26th

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- Put in our first order that week

December

- Do another panda fundraiser witihin the first 2 weeks

- Start to sell our merchandise as soon as we get it

- Meet with Ms. Lindsey once we get the merch

- Begin work on the websites before christmas break

- Progress presentaions December 14th

January

- Continue to sell merchandise when school starts

- Prep for second car wash, get volunteers

- Start creating poster board middle of January

- Meet with Ms. Lindsey 3rd week in the month

- Put in one more order depending on money, just athletic wear

- Panda fundraiser (maybe)

February

- Car wash on the 2nd (undetermind)

- Meet with Ms. Lindsey second week of February

- Sell what we can to the students rest of the month

- Sell remaining items at 4th Friday

March

- Turn in final project

Faculty Interview
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I did my faculty interview with Ellen Federoff, the Dean of Students. My partner and I

chose to interview her because she has been head paddling coach for 3 years, and has been

assistant athletic director in the past. So in our minds she probably has some insight on

merchandise and fundraisers. Additionally, she did help us with the idea for our junior project.

Overall, we talked about mostly the sports teams merchandise and designs in the past.

She was very informative and helped us a lot with who to talk to and how the school fundraises.

Now that the luau is the schools main way of fundraising, they don’t do a lot of other fundraisers

except maybe a car wash. She also informed us of how the shark logo was created, and how the

other sports teams usually design their jerseys.