Spirit Box Student Management Team

Below are the primary roles and responsibilities that we've seen from successful Spirit Box teams. These are recommendations based on best practices established by other programs to get you up and running with your Spirit Box business.

A student could cover multiple roles or you could establish teams to take on each role. Minimum, we’d recommend you establish a team of 3 to 5 students to effectively manage these key areas of focus.

GENERAL MANAGER

Someone will need to be responsible for the overall operation of your new automated retail business. This could be the adviser or a responsible student who can be trusted to lead the efforts required to run a business. 

Duties:

• Facilitate the team from daily/weekly team meetings to planning and goal setting.
• Drive the team to find consensus on decisions.
• Be the first point of contact with school administration.

FINANCE

The Financial role manages and monitors the company’s finances.

Duties:

• Cash Management. Remove cash and stock change weekly.  
• Sales Reporting. Monitor and share sales information using the Spirit Box online sales portal.
• Complete and s hare regular Profit and Loss and Cash Flow statements. Report to the team how the Spirit Box is doing financially in relationship to budgets and goals*.

*Spirit Box provides templates to help create budgets, profit/loss statements, and monthly cash flow projections.

PRODUCT

Just like any retail business, it’s important that your team keep a pulse on products desired by your target market. This role will be responsible for keeping the product mix updated with items that the students, faculty/staff and parents want and need.

Duties:

• Research. Discover and evaluate ideas through customer surveys, feedback, trends, or simply conversations.
• Product scheduling. Make sure products are ready for launch in desired timeframes.
• Works with Marketing Manager to coordinate communications and promotions of new products.

INVENTORY AND PURCHASING

The primary focus of this role is to make sure you never have empty coils in your Spirit Box (empty coils = lost sales).

Duties include:

• Tracking inventory levels. Counts and tracks product stock levels.
• Orders products. Works with Product Development Manager, vendors/suppliers, and Spirit Box Corporate to order inventory in a timely manner. Forecasts future needs and responds accordingly.
• Supply/Demand planning. Stays aware of weekend or evening events that will draw large crowds, and works to keep Spirit Box fully stocked to accommodate the needs of these crowds.
• Processing returns.

MARKETING

The Marketing role manages all communication to promote the Spirit Box and its products to its customers.

Duties include:

• Establishing target markets. Segmenting your audience will help you target your messaging to their specific needs and preferences. Your message will be different when speaking to freshmen vs. seniors or musicians vs. athletes.
• Establish Communication Channels. What are the various communication channels the team can utilize to communicate to each of your target markets?
• Plan and brainstorm. Work with the team to brainstorm and plan out the marketing activities you’ll want to execute throughout the school year.
• Communicate! Execute on your promotions, campaigns and regular messaging to your audiences through your defined channels.