Spotlight: Castle Creations

Chatham Charter has three student-run businesses — Castle Café, Castle Creations, and Castle Media. Tied to all of the high school marketing classes that are honors level, the businesses each have a specialty focus. Castle Creations was re-branded in 2023 to create apparel and specialty items. So far the business has completed orders groups within the school and area businesses. The school community benefits from having an on-campus option to order t-shirts and hoodies for elementary field trips, athletic teams, clubs, Knights Family Weekend, and the Turkey Trot.

Student leaders Garrison Clark, Westin Phillips, and John Whistle Spillman comprise the Castle Creations certification team that is responsible for keeping the Student-Based Enterprise (SBE) gold certification active through DECA Inc. Student production managers (Madilyn Fields, Maya Flores, Abby McPherson, Mia Palmer, Annabelle Senter, and in 2023-2024, Kynzie Jordan) act as quality control, ensuring orders are correctly filled and that the printing is done to specifications. Customers can submit their own designs when ordering or have the students create their concept. The advanced-level marketing classes practice design and learn about aspects of an apparel printing business. Entrepreneurship students are currently marketing new product lines they developed in class and recently launched. DECA officers and the SBE managers want to expand the Castle Creations program to include on-demand printing by having a selection of transfers and apparel in stock and having a rolling order system.

Castle Creations is available for customers from Chatham Charter as well as the surrounding community. View the online store. Email CCSDECA@chathamcharter.org about submitting custom orders.

Read more about DECA’s state success.