When you walk into The PITCH at 462 West Franklin Street, it’s not uncommon to stumble onto a variety of things. The space is a coffee shop during the day and a bar at night, with meeting spaces for networking and studio space for musicians, content creators and web developers.
For the last week, though, the center space has been particularly spooky – decorated during afternoon and evening business hours with Halloween costumes and accessories on racks.
“We have cute outfits, we have every day outfits – or the Halloween-equivalent of every day – fun accessories of all types,” says UNC junior Sonali Ratnasinghe during one of her shifts at the pop-up shop. “For all types of shoppers, we’ve got you.”
The project is the anchor of BUSI 590, a new class through UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School titled Flash Entrepreneurship that’s being taught by UNC professor Tim Flood. Flood, who teaches several classes in the school, describes the goals of the class as helping students get bitten by the entrepreneurship bug while preparing them for “the way the world is, and the way the world is going” with the shifting of the gig economy landscape.
The course has a dozen undergraduate students, who have a range of degrees they are pursuing. Entrepreneurship is a key element of their future professions, though, and the class aims to provide a roadmap on how to quickly get an idea up and running, looking at the whole picture of the logistics necessary to get a business going. Flood says through that experience, the students will learn how to thrive in whatever type of workplace they choose.
“The idea of the family-run companies and the small-to medium-sized companies being the engine of the economy is great, and you’re even better positioned to work for those mid-sized companies,” says Flood. “And the innovation, the problem-solving, the critical thinking, the handling of fires in front of you… [those] are the kind of skills that come from entrepreneurship, but they absolutely apply to Fortune 100 companies. [Those] need students like this who can think through problems and come up with a solution.”
Part of the Heel-O-Ween Pop-Up Shop in The PITCH on West Franklin Street, where UNC students run the business for class.
Shoppers peruse the mask and wig section of the Heel-O-Ween Pop-Up Shop.
While Flood and a team of professional entrepreneurs help with some back of the house details, the students are the ones handling the operations and marketing for Heel-O-Ween, while also staffing the store by teaming up for three-hour shifts twice a week. Senior Rita Liu says one of the surprises of the experience so far has highlighted more of the daily, critical tasks of retail.
“We were more expecting [to do] customer service, selling and doing cash [register] stuff,” says Liu. “Not having so [much] inventory for things we sold, putting the stickers with prices on everything.”
“This has been the most immersive class I’ve had so far, and the most hands-on learning experience I can get,” adds UNC junior Alex Lakatta, who says working in the pop-up is his first time working in retail.
It’s not just the university and business school that is support of BUSI 590’s efforts, but also its extensive alumni base. The PITCH is owned and operated by Mike Griffin and Willie Barron, who each went to Carolina decades apart from each other and teamed up in 2021 to run a space meant for student collaboration. Flash Entrepreneurship is not the first Kenan-Flagler class to utilize the West Franklin Street space – but Griffin says it is a “perfect” example of how UNC is helping the students get out of the classroom to learn.
“The goal when we bought The PITCH was to create a student-driven venue to do experiential learning and, from there, hopefully spark interest in business ownership,” he says. “The new dean at the business school, Mary Margaret Frank, one of her new strategic initiatives is experiential learning. I think there will be many more classes like this.”
Additionally, Griffin used his own connections through UNC alumni to partner with businesses to round out the shop – like Joel Weinshanker who co-owns Rubie’s, one of the world’s largest costume distributors who supplied the inventory. Not only did the partners sign on to help students and their education, but the cause they’re raising money for. All proceeds from the Heel-O-Ween pop-up will be going to the Manna Food Bank of Asheville and the North Carolina division of the American Red Cross to help with Hurricane Helene relief efforts.
Flood says depending on how well the costume shop goes, he sees it as an opportunity for next year’s BUSI 590 students to follow suit and for Heel-O-Ween to become a “institutional” business each fall. Additionally, the current cohort is exploring how to use The PITCH’s space to provide some late-night hot dog and snack options to students later in the semester.
“They already had the sense of that fun – the ‘get in there while the getting is good’ – and the notion of ‘if we do this right, it’s going to have legs for forever after,” says Flood. “The gig economy is great, if you can make it work for you. But to make it work for you, it takes an awful lot of smarts and understanding of the inner workings of [businesses]. They’re getting all of that.”
The Heel-O-Ween pop-up will run through Halloween night and will do a fire sale of inventory afterward. The shop will be open at The PITCH from 2 to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said the BUSI 590 course had both undergraduate and graduate-level students taking it. There are graduate students helping with the pop-up shop, but not enrolled in the course. The piece has been updated to reflect this.
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