Littleton Students Learn Sweet Smell of Success

By Rebecca Brown on Monday, June 25, 2001.

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Many schools try to get their students real world experience, often by setting up internships or work-study programs. In Littleton, high school marketing students are actually running their own business. It's an on-line candy store. You can find it at http://www.chutter.com/

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CHUTTER 1: Stepping inside Chutter General Store on Littleton?s Main Street is like going back in time. The air is sweet with the aroma of homemade fudge. Hundreds of glass jars filled with penny candy beckon kids and adults alike.

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CHUTTER 2: But the old-fashioned ambiance of the store contrasts to the bustling e-commerce enterprise going on in its basement.

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CHUTTER 3 Down here, high school students are running the Chutter?s Candy Connection, an on-line extension of the shop upstairs. Students took over the e-commerce enterprise this spring. After running the Chutter.com website for two years, storeowners Carol and Mike Hamilton realized selling penny candy on-line wasn?t practical for them?too much labor and too little margin.

Instead they saw the business as an opportunity for learning. Carol Hamilton explains.

HAMILTON 1 58 We decided to do this because it couldn?t functionally run as a successful business, but it could be run as a successful tool for children to learn how real life really is.

CHUTTER 4 High school marketing teacher Lynn Davis agreed.

DAVIS 103 E-commerce is the way to go. It allows for global competition, it allows for the kids to put into practice what they learned, it also teaches them the soft skills, how to work as a team, dealing with customers?things that don?t just come from the classroom.

CHUTTER 5 Unlike other in work study or internship programs, the students are actually running the business themselves?with some advice from the Hamiltons and Davis.
Students do every aspect of the job, from taking orders to packing and shipping boxes to creating financial statements. They purchase their candy wholesale from the Chutter store while they build up their own lines of credit.

Carol Hamilton says the students put the Chutter name, and their own, on the line everyday.

HAMILTON 2 62 Anybody can sit behind a computer and answer e-mail, but these kids have to talk to these customers, these are their customers, and they have to make that conscious decision every time they speak to somebody, how am I going to handle this.

CHUTTER 6 Shelley Chase is a fourth year marketing student who spends many hours in addition to class helping make the business work.

CHASE 1 71 I oversee a little bit of everything. I make sure the kids before us get their stuff done, I make sure whose here gets their stuff done. I make sure that Mike and Carol get their money, I make sure things are shipped on time, I make sure people are happy with what they receive. We just try to keep people happy here.

CHUTTER 7 Junior Chad Stearns specializes in the Candy Connection?s website design. He says there?s a different incentive for working on this kind of assignment than in regular schoolwork.

CHAD 78 This is more than just the worksheets and quizzes we do in class.what we do here has an impact on what happens. For instance, the web page I make won?t just be another classroom activity. We?ll actually make money on what I?ve done?there?s more motivation for making a web page than just getting a grade. 79?I?m working for real customers, not just a book or a grade.

CHUTTER 8 Shelley Chase agrees that what she?s learning doesn?t necessarily come from a book.

CHASE 2 69 Here I?m learning more the business aspect, I want to major in business management after high school so I?m learning more of the real decisions that have to be made, not just oh we have to do this. We actually have to do it ourselves.

CHUTTER 9 Upstairs in the general store, students do the most labor-intensive part of selling candy on-line: filling orders. Davis reads off orders?from California and New Jersey--and working in pairs, students fill them.

87 We need 50 red dollars 50 sesame crunch, 50 bulls eye caramel creams. Etc.

89 A hundred Mary Janes. 2, 3, 4, etc.

92 We need 20 gobstoppers for another order. Can you wrap that up? Those are down in the penny candy section?

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CHUTTER 10 School administrators see the on-line business as giving students experience they can take with them to college and to the workplace. They also see it as pointing to ways to tackle a big problem in Littleton and other North Country communities: the ?brain drain? of smart kids who leave the area because they don?t see opportunity here.
Vocational Director Forrest Goodwin explains.

GOODWIN 82 It teaches our student to use the tools we have, the Internet, the computer, e-commerce? they can still stay here and do the job they would have had to do in Manchester or Boston. Now they can use the Internet to do that same type of job.

CHUTTER 11 Chutter?s Candy Connection plans to operate through the summer with a reduced student staff. Next fall, more than double the usual number of students has already signed up to take the marketing class.

Reporting from Littleton, I?m Rebecca Brown for NHPR News.