About a year ago, a University of Maryland student joined a nationwide apparel company. To date, she’s sold more than $100,000 worth of custom clothing to student groups on the campus.
Sofie Levinson, a sophomore communication major, has been working as a campus manager at this university for Fresh Prints — a company that offers design ideas and printing for custom apparel — since spring 2016. As a campus manager, Levinson finds potential clients, collaborates on print design options and sets prices.
During her first semester working, she sold $19,000 worth of apparel. In fall 2016, she more than doubled that figure, selling $40,000 of apparel. She’s sold $35,000 of apparel so far this semester, and is on track to sell $130,000 of custom apparel in total by the end of the academic year.
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Levinson currently ranks in the top 12 percent in terms of sales of all campus managers at more than 120 participating campuses across the country. She first joined her second semester freshman year after hearing about Fresh Prints through a friend who attends Washington University in St. Louis, where two of Fresh Prints’ founders went to school.
“I want to say that my presence is the strongest here, and that’s the goal when you’re hired for your school: to conquer your school,” said Levinson, who aims to make Fresh Prints the main apparel presence on the campus. Levinson is working as the only campus manager at this university this semester, but has worked alongside others in past semesters.
This university’s campus is the third-highest in terms of Fresh Prints sales, Levinson said. It trails behind University of Michigan and Washington University in St. Louis.
While Fresh Prints comprises a large network of campus managers, Levinson is one of the most social campus managers, said Jolijt Tamanaha, chief marketing officer and head of growth at Fresh Prints. Levinson recently visited a campus manager at University of Michigan, where the campus managers each sell about $250,000 worth of apparel every semester, Levinson said.
“She’s almost as much on top of our stuff as we are,” said Zach Stein, a sophomore psychology major and apparel chair of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.
Stein lauded Levinson’s persistence, proactivity and ability to manage such a large-scale operation. Alpha Epsilon Pi works with Levinson, who called the fraternity one of her best clients, for larger orders such as philanthropy and intramural events, where Stein said it is important to create a sense of belonging and unity through apparel.
Levinson said she has always been the type of person to want to go out and meet people, and Fresh Prints has given her the opportunity to do so with clients. She added that she loves seeing her clients happy with the custom apparel she helped them make — especially when her clients are Greek organizations. She works with about 25 fraternities and sororities on the campus, so she gets to see her work often.
And while this university’s campus is her main focus, she’ll even occasionally get “random Bar and Bat Mitzvah orders” from her hometown community, or orders from restaurants, she said.
When working with clients, Levinson finds out what type of design the clients want and communicates that to Fresh Prints’ artists, who then create the designs in Illustrator, she said. She added the turnaround time for the artists — how long it takes them to come up with a design once a client tells Levinson what they want — is about 24 hours.
“Our main goal is time, fast response, just getting back to our clients right away,” Levinson said.
This means getting messages at all hours, she noted, which can sometimes be difficult to keep up with.
“I’ll have clients texting me when I’m out … because I have created that environment where I say, ‘Text me any time, I am available 24/7,'” she said. “But it’s hard to be available 24/7.”
When looking for new campus managers, Fresh Prints wants “persistent, determined, and passionate people,” and the hiring process ensures that only those who fit the description join the company, Tamanaha said. Levinson said the application, while long, was filled with “fun, quirky” questions that reflect the company’s carefree environment.
“The application process is so long [and] hard … but that’s because running a business is extremely long [and] hard,” she said.
The company hires less than 5 percent of those who apply and hires only freshman and sophomore students, Tamanaha said. By sticking with freshmen and sophomores, Fresh Prints hopes the campus managers will stay with the company as they age, she added.
Tamanaha said it’s the relationships between the campus managers and the Fresh Prints team — often recent college graduates serving in upper-level management positions — that enables the campus managers to achieve so much.
“We have a very real, fundamental belief that college students can build companies and can do incredible things,” Tamanaha said.
Once hired, campus managers receive two to three months of training where they learn the ins and outs of the business — from the screenprinting process to finding clients to setting prices.
“Once they’re done with two to three months of training, we give them autonomy that no other custom apparel company gives students they work with,” she said.
Levinson said working as a campus manager for Fresh Prints has helped her figure out what she likes to do, which will help her when she graduates and enters the job market. She added she’s come to see her bosses as friends.
“It’s really nice to have a boss who you’re really close to,” Levinson said, “to help you, to mentor you and to guide you.”
