The Fresh Prints Scholarship: Why Two Young Owners Are Legit Giving Away Real Money
Jacob Goodman and Josh Arbit hated each other. It was 2011. They were freshmen at Washington University in St. Louis and rushing the same fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.
Josh had been charged with making sure everyone in his class passed the fraternity’s pledging process, and Jacob was born with a deep aversion to following any directions.
But later that same school year, when 19-year-old Jacob wanted to buy his second business, he went straight to Josh to ask him to be his partner. Jacob admits: “I had never met anyone else so willing to sacrifice himself for the success of the group. I knew we could build a company together.” Luckily, Josh immediately agreed.
So they bought Fresh Prints — a custom apparel business — from the founders, who were upperclassmen about to graduate.
At the time, Fresh Prints had five “Campus Managers,” i.e. students who ran the business at their schools. Today, Fresh Prints has more than 250 Campus Managers and will generate over $10 million in revenue across the next 12 months.
Jacob and Josh both graduated in 2014 and moved to NYC to run Fresh Prints full time. “It’s been quite the experience, and we’re just getting started,” Josh said.
“All of Fresh Prints’ success was entirely built on students,” Josh explains: “it was founded by students. We bought it as students. The Campus Managers are all students. And most of our clients are students.”
It seemed only natural to turn around and give back.
“The cost of higher education is absurd,” Jacob laments: “and while we can’t cover tuition — yet — we thought we could at least make life a little easier for one student.” So late 2017, Fresh Prints launched the Grand Plan Scholarship and offered to give one student $1,000 to use for whatever would get him or her closer to his or her goals.
The first winner, Lyndsay Browne was a freshman at Texas Christian University. She wrote two passionate paragraphs about her dream of owning her own graphic design firm.
“The responses were all so inspiring. We realized we had to give more,” Josh said. They ran four more scholarships. One went to Bharat Pulgam at the University of Minnesota, who started a non-profit to destigmatize mental health issues in teens. Another to Nicole Brinker, a Stanford student from Colombia who founded a healthy soda company that she dreams of bringing to the US.
Then Fresh Prints pledged to spend the summer of 2018 granting over $14,000 to students. They are doing so via both scholarships and prizes for students who share the opportunity with their classmates.
Jacob explains: “we’re just incredibly honored to play a tiny role in their future success.”
Anyone who doesn’t work for Fresh Prints and will be a college freshman, sophomore, or junior is eligible for their scholarships. If you’re interested, you’re encouraged to apply here.
