Hands-On, All-In: Babson’s Retailing Management Students Create Unforgettable Pop-Up Experience
As the campus returned to activity after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the temperature on Monday, December 1 lurked around 35 degrees. A nor’easter loomed, and yet, hundreds of people, from Babson College students coming straight from class to staff members bringing their young children to work, lined up down the Park Manor Quad.
The poster said it was for a meet-and-greet with professional basketball star Jaylen Brown. But, really, it was to witness the culminating project for this semester’s Retailing Management class.
“It felt amazing to see such a large crowd lined up and excited for something our class created,” Colette Posillico ’26 says. “My friends kept texting me that they couldn’t believe Jaylen Brown was on campus and that this was for a class. It was incredibly rewarding knowing our planning and effort turned into a real event that energized the community.”
As temperatures dropped and the crowd swelled, the students in Professor of Marketing Lauren Beitelspacher‘s class could see how much impact their work has. For the next three days, they would be running a pop-up store selling apparel from Brown’s brand, 741 Performance, and today was the grand-opening event.
With help from Joel Kamm MBA’12, the founder of mobile retail space company Flexetail, whose product housed the student’s inventory for the pop-up, this class provided the entire community with a day that will never be forgotten.
A Moment Months (and Years) in the Making
Flash back to the beginning of the semester, the students knew immediately this class would be special—or, as they ended up describing it, “one of the most hands-on and memorable classes.”
Retailing Management is one of the many classes Babson undergraduate students can take to satisfy the Advanced Experiential requirement, which is designed to have students work with real-life organizations and do experiential learning that isn’t simulated. This iteration provides hands-on experience with customer engagement, merchandising decisions, and real-time problem solving, all of which are central to retail buying.
“There is something so exciting about planning an event from fruition and watching it come to life before your eyes,” Grace Klingaman ’26 says. “So much of school is talking about doing something and following through with it gives it so much more substance.”
It’s also one of the big opportunities students have to meet with professionals, and in most cases, they end up feeling like a part of the company.
“There is something so exciting about planning an event from fruition and watching it come to life before your eyes. So much of school is talking about doing something and following through with it gives it so much more substance.” Grace Klingaman ’26
“The 741 team first came to our class, and I could tell they trusted us as equals versus just students and were very excited and receptive to our ideas,” Klingaman says. “We felt their support but, more importantly, their trust in the weeks leading up to and during the event.”
Most of the students in the class are graduating in 2026, and this class brings together all elements of their education, covering aspects such as recruiting skills, consulting, and supply chain, along with the Babson staples of communication, problem solving, and ingenuity.
As they worked out logistics, customer flow, and their promotional strategy, students drew on classwork from previous classes, including work related to operations management, marketing, managerial accounting, and of course, Foundations of Management & Entrepreneurship (FME). “It felt like a culmination of everything we’ve learned,” Vrishin Jain ’26 said. “This was everything I came to Babson for.”
That Extra Babson Special Sauce
The students also saw the reach of the Babson alumni network. Kamm and Flexetail were brought in early in the process and provided both inventory management and inspiration to the group.
“(Kamm) embodies the entrepreneurial mindset Babson promotes and seeing how he built Flexetail from the ground up offered a real example of innovation in action,” Ulysses Munoz-Bonin ’26 says.
That mindset guided the students as they hit setbacks throughout the semester, but they knew they couldn’t ignore them. After all, in the professional world, you must solve those problems. As Klingaman puts it, “thankfully one of the first things we are instilled with at Babson is the need to pivot in the face of the unexpected.”
Operational challenges due to Brown’s security protocol, as well as logistic headaches throughout the semester, an impatient crowd at the opening, and more inclement weather on Day 2 of the event, provided opportunities for the class to see if they’ve learned anything the last four years.
They, of course, have.
“Being entrusted to manage real operations and interact directly with customers, pushed me to apply classroom theory in a high-pressure, real-world environment,” Munoz-Bonin says.
With the pop-up wrapped up and the class winding down—and one semester to go for the graduating students—right now they can reflect on the excitement they brought to the community. To peers snagging their first 741 shoes to young fans getting a glimpse of their favorite, to this class of students experiencing their first and last sales (and a photo with the basketball star), this is a specific moment they can officially call theirs.
Posted in Community, Entrepreneurial Leadership
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