One of Allen High School’s student-run businesses is preparing to open its store on Oct. 25. The Eagle Edge is a store inside the Performance Art Center which sells school merchandise and spirit wear.
“I want to emphasize that we are part of the school,” senior manager Hannah Peters said. “We are a student-run operation. We are not just like a business down the street where you can buy Eagle merch, or how they sell [eagle merch] at Kroger. This is a student-run organization, the manager is a student,”
Eagle Edge is having a soft launch for products on Oct. 3 aimed towards staff and teachers, but it does not exclude students.
“We are doing a soft opening, meaning we won’t be advertising much, and we aren’t going to have a lot of product out on Oct. 3,” senior marketing team member Daniela Movshits said. “It’s mostly for staff to come by and buy merchandise, but it is also open to students who want to come by and buy snacks.”
The grand opening of the Eagle Edge will be happening on Oct. 25. Along with the Eagle Edge opening, both the CUTX and Blu Restaurant will be opening on the same day.
“We are partnering with CUTX and Blu, we are doing a big event in the PAC,” Peters said. “Blu will be cooking and CUTX will have a booth set up. We are getting the three businesses of the school together.”
The opening of Eagle Edge is happening later this year than previous years due to K Hall renovations over the summer.
With a brand new school year, the Eagle Edge decided to switch up the way that it runs.
“Since the place got renovated, we are going to move things around throughout the store,” senior operations manager Logan Kyle said. “We will have more people working so it’ll be a friendlier environment. As opposed to last year where we had one or two kids, now we’ll have three or four.”
Another addition to the store this year is the ability to customize merchandise.
“Our biggest change this year is our production team,” Peters said. “We actually have new heat press machines, Cricuts, vinyl transfer stuff and we are doing request forms, so you can get custom water bottles, shirts, hats and whatever you want. We can do embroidery, you can pick the design and we’ll design it for you.”
There is also a new system of delivery this year for the Eagle Edge.
“We are expanding our delivery system, so we offer curbside pickup for all our online orders throughout the year, like we did last year and hopefully this year we are hoping to do shipping,” Peters said.
Curbside pickup is going to be outside the PAC. Customers will call the Eagle Edge and students will bring out their order to their cars.
The Eagle Edge is hoping to implement new products later on in the school year.
“We are looking to do more accessories this year, like hats and banners, because mostly we’ve focused on apparel, so we are looking to do more accessories this year,” Peters said.
