College Collaboration @ Wisconsin Relic

04/23/09 9:42pm PDT

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College Students. Your first thought is probably Frat parties, Football games, and Beer. What you don’t think of is a free, creative labor force, with collaborative resources who want to be paid in experience, not in dollars.

I was a senior in college and wanted to start a t-shirt company. After creating about 100 designs, I received some encouragement from my good friend, Kelly, to actually do it, rather than just talking about it. So, I enlisted her help and began getting organized. Like most young entrepreneurs we thought, “Where do we start?” We were students in college at one of the biggest schools in the country, the University of Wisconsin. So we looked around and thought, who wants to work for us, but not get paid?…college kids. We didn’t need venture capitalists to fund us to pay for employees, we needed college students, the non-hungover kind. Ok, mostly non-hungover. The thing about us college students is that we don’t realize we need experience on our resume until we are almost about to graduate. So older students are always scrambling to find jobs, internships, or anything to put on their resume. We submitted a job description for an intern on Craigslist.com, and after sifting through a ton of resumes, we found two interns willing to work at least 20 hours a week for free.

To start Wisconsin Relic, my aforementioned t-shirt company, we needed a website, and subsequently needed photos. So we had to produce a photo shoot, which meant we needed models, a photographer, and much more. “How much is this going to cost?” was the question. We’re poor college kids, with no money, so how did we pull this off, you ask? We found even more college kids! We asked our beautiful college friends to be models free of charge, they agreed, because they know they are beautiful. We collaborated with budding musicians who also modeled in exchange for exposure for their band. We contacted a young photographer fresh into the real world who looking to expand his portfolio. We found two videographers who were starting their own production company and needed material for their website. We then contacted the local beauty school and found hair and make-up artists who were about to graduate and needed experience. And we pulled off an all-day photo shoot for under $500. For comparison, it normally costs large retailers over $20,000. The collaboration was incredible, it produced an amazing photo spread for Wisconsin Relic and constructively built resumes for our peers.

Advice for others:

Our advice, take a look at your local college or university for its undiscovered human resources. Students are ravenous for experience, especially as they come closer to graduation. As thoughts of the real world set in, it is easier to convince us that some valuable experiences are worth doing pro bono. Look for a career services center or a campus job website for your next low-cost, high quality collaboration. When you can pay your wages in experience, we all get a whole lot more for our money.

College Collaboration @ Wisconsin Relic

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