According to Storiole adviser, Sophia Ross the Storiole was approved as a gold level store among other stores who also qualified, as DECA looked at several aspects for the ranking. 

“The Storiole submitted a school-based enterprise project to National DECA and they have recertified our store as a gold level store, so we had to meet certain standards in the area of pricing, finance and service management,” Ross said.  

Senior Storiole staffer Lola Ruff said she looks forward to the achievement due to her classmates working diligently in class for the store. 

“It’s exciting, the whole class worked pretty hard a couple weeks, almost a month or two so it’s just good that our hard work paid off,” Ruff said. 

According to Ross, if the Storiole earned the gold level, they can move on to compete in the DECA International Career Development Conference in Nashville. 

“If they qualify for the gold level then automatically we send one of the three students who worked on that project to the national DECA conference,” Ross said.

Ross said accreditation for stores reinforces the idea that the store is a legitimate business.

“I feel like anytime we are doing anything in education and if there is some certification process that goes along with saying this is a legit store, they meet these particular standards and they”re functioning as like a true business,” Ross said. “That’s important for just the integrity of the program and it’s really cool for students to write down on their resumes.”

Senior Storiole staffer Miriam Hope said they were granted the gold level because of students work ethic in the store and in class. 

“We qualified for (gold level) because people actually put in work, not just in the store but when we are working we take it seriously, like a job,” Hope said.  

Ross said students are always doing their job at the Storiole and on the online platform. 

“They work hard, they run this business every single Monday through Friday and now even our online store and the venue on it all the time,” Ross said. 

According to Ruff, she will be presenting along with others about the Storiole’s school-based enterprise project to a set of judges in Nashville. 

“For the competition we have to present about pricing, like how we price our products so we would have to make a poster with visuals and then explain to the judges for 10 minutes about our pricing strategy,” Ruff said. 

The DECA International Career Development Conference will take place from April 29th to May 2nd in Nashville, Tennessee.