Posted February 17, 2014

Temple Made: Rachel and Sarah Stanton

Video Production: Gina Benigno

Names: Rachel and Sarah Stanton

Year: Seniors

School: Fox School of Business

Major: Finance (Rachel) and entrepreneurship (Sarah)

Home town: Bristol, Pa.

HOW TO TELL US APART

Sarah: I have brown eyes and Rachel has blue.

Rachel: Sarah's two inches taller. But I'm two minutes older.

WHY WE CHOSE TEMPLE

Sarah: "We knew the Fox School of Business was really good and had a strong national reputation. That was a contributing factor in our decision."

Rachel: "One of the main reasons was I wanted an urban campus a big campus. When I came to visit Temple, I liked it immediately."

Sarah: "I was able to find so much more opportunity because I was in the city. I got a job at Comcast as a sophomore at age 19—I worked there as a marketing intern for two years. It also helped that Temple was so close to home."

TRANSFORMATIVE MOMENT

Rachel: "We have a startup company called Fruitstrology. We sell tank tops and T-shirts screenprinted with a sketch of one of eight different fruits. The shirts are the color of the fruit. Each fruit has a trait written inside of it: independent pineapple, talkative grape, charismatic peach."

Sarah: "It's a one-for-one social clothing line."

Rachel: "For every shirt that is purchased, we donate a serving of fruit to a child in Philadelphia on a one-for-one basis."

Sarah: "When we came to Temple, we got involved with Fox Net Impact, an organization in the Business School. It's about social responsibility and sustainability. The moment that Fruitstrology clicked—the moment we really got the idea for this business—is when we were urban gardening at the Uber Street Garden with local children near Temple's campus."

Rachel: "Each week we'd talk to these kids about [healthful] food and teach them how to grow [healthful] food. It was really cool to see because at the end of it, they could take the food home with them. We wanted to expand that whole idea and get more fruit to kids in Philly who may not have lived by the garden, who didn't have that opportunity."

Sarah: "We really believe in social-mission businesses, and the power that a business has to change things and to make a positive impact. We knew how to make and sell shirts, and we thought Fruitstrology was a way to help the kids of Philadelphia."

Rachel: "Last year, we entered the Be Your Own Boss Bowl. It's a business-plan competition held through Temple's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute. We wrote a 15-page, comprehensive business plan for it. We ended up becoming finalists. We pitched our Fruitstrology business plan in April of last year to a room of investors."

Sarah: "Even though we didn't win, we decided to do the business anyway. We just officially launched in September, and we've been doing really well."

Rachel: "Our goal is to expand into other cities. We're prepared for that because we've developed a big network of people here at Temple and in Philadelphia who really believe in what we're doing. We have a lot of mentors at Temple who've helped us. Professors are a big part of that. We've got so much advice from them. Also, when we were finalists in the Be Your Own Boss Bowl, we were matched with a local entrepreneur mentor. We are still in contact with him two years later. All the people we've been introduced to through Fox have been so supportive and encouraging. That's something that makes a difference and makes us want to keep doing this."

Sarah: "Even as our business progresses, Philadelphia is always going to be our home base, and Temple is always going to be very much a part of Fruitstrology."