How can you be certain you’ve excelled at your job? One sure sign would be meeting with your boss about your future and being offered not the position you wanted but a higher-ranking role.

That’s exactly how post-graduate life began for Madelynn Welch. Her outstanding work in the classroom as a University of South Carolina Department of Retailing student and as a Barefoot Campus Outfitter employee earned her a position as a buyer/merchandiser at the company’s corporate headquarters in Texas.

Welch, a native of tiny Turbeville, South Carolina, learned during her first year as a USC student that majoring in retailing with a concentration in fashion merchandising and digital innovations was an option. She officially chose it at the start of her second year and found a perfect fit.

“The classes that really stuck out to me were ones about sales strategies: just learning about how customers think, the way everything affects how pricing works, how consumer spending works,” she says. “There was a specific class that I took my first semester in the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management about businesses in the United States and abroad and how everything runs back to manufacturers and how the supply chain worked. I learned about buying and working with vendors and immediately thought that could be a really good thing for me. I found it all very interesting and intriguing and just everything I like.”

Welch put her early lessons into practice by applying for a job at the Barefoot Campus Outfitter store near campus. In just six months, she was promoted to store manager, and found herself facing the added challenge of supervising people her own age who she had been working alongside.

“I wanted them to know that I wasn't here to drill sergeant them, that we all had the same goal and it was to be the best store. It was difficult at first, but I was also very blessed to have wonderful people on the team, so they made it so much easier,” she says.

After graduation in December 2024, Welch was invited along with other managers to Barefoot headquarters in Stephenville, Texas. She met with her boss there to discuss her future, planning to ask for a full-time salaried position to continue as a manager in Columbia. Instead, a very pleasant surprise came.

“She said ‘You can take the salary at Columbia if you want, but we also saved you a spot here. You have a job here if you want it,’” Welch recalls.

She spent three weeks in Texas early in 2025, attending markets with other buyers and getting a feel for her new role and for the idea of living so far from home for the first time. She found a warm welcome from coworkers and chose to accept the role, starting this month.

“It's definitely a different environment. It makes me appreciate some small things about South Carolina that I never did before, but Texas is great,” she says.

Welch also credits an opportunity offered to all College of HRSM students as a key to her success: the Marnie Pearce Professionalism Seminar, led by Clinical Instructor Jana Xanthakos.

“She prepared me for professionalism and gave me knowledge that I'm going to carry on, even if it's not specifically about buying and merchandising,” Welch says. “I learned how to carry myself and portray myself in front of people I respect, and how to bring things up in meetings that might be uncomfortable, like salary. It was just knowledge that I've never been taught before or exposed to before, and it’s something I will never take for granted. I was thinking about it going into meetings after graduation, and it gave me confidence.”

Always one to look ahead, Welch has considered that she may turn her talents to entrepreneurship in the future, but she is currently thrilled to be where she is.

“Being a buyer and merchandiser is my dream job. I never expected to get an opportunity like this so soon. So yes, it just had me thinking of other things further down the road, but this is truly, you know, what I've always wanted to do, so I'm just excited to do it.”