Students enrolled in Kevin Corey’s business courses at Uniondale High School aren’t just learning from a textbook — they’re receiving real-life lessons from a teacher who runs his own multi-million-dollar company.
In addition to teaching, Corey, 41, is president and co-founder of Stall Mates founded in Islip — a U.S.-made, plant-based, individually wrapped flushable bathroom wipe brand that brought in $3.8 million in revenue in 2025. Corey and his longtime friend, Greg Schipf, started the company in 2013 after an unexpected moment sparked an idea, a year before he began teaching business classes in Uniondale.
While trying to pay off undergraduate and graduate school debt from St. Joseph’s College and Dowling College, Corey cleaned pools across Long Island with Schipf, who was also working to pay off college loans after attending Queens College.
Because of the nature of the job, they often did not have access to bathrooms and would stop at places like McDonald’s to use public restrooms. During one such trip, Schipf used a bathroom that was out of toilet paper.
“When he came back to the work van, I said to him, ‘How much would you pay for one baby wipe right now?” Corey recalled. “He said, ‘I’d pay five bucks,’ and that moment was like, ‘Wow.’”
Corey now sells the product on Amazon and through online retailers like Walmart, Target and Grove Collaborative. He also expanded the business by packaging home wet wipes.
Corey said his experience running an online business has shown him how quickly the industry can change, particularly in e-commerce and customer behavior, lessons that now shape his teaching. He teaches students how factors like pricing, shipping costs and packaging influence success, drawing directly from his own experience running the company.
“We like saying, ‘Doing Stall Mates gave us a doctorate in Amazon’ — none of it applied by the time I started my business,” Corey said of what he learned about e-commerce in college. “It had changed so much. I had to adjust my brand, prices, change warehouses because of fulfillment fees, the weight of shipping.”
“Everything I was learning and adjusting to on the fly every year with Stall Mates, I was then bringing it into the classroom,” Corey said. “And then using that instead of like a textbook.”
He said that because of these changes since college, he thinks his teaching methods would be “robotic” if he did not run his own company.
He also uses real-world examples to explain changes in the industry. He gave examples from the toilet paper crisis during the pandemic in 2020 and how it impacted his own business while showing data from it on the SMART Board.
One of Corey’s former students, Esdras Duran, 20, pursued graphic design to help bring business ideas to life. He now works on commission for Corey, designing packaging and labels.
“It was 100 times more impactful — if it was a different teacher, the class would have been different,” Duran said about learning from Corey with his real-life experiences.
“The fact he was somebody who was actively doing all these things,” Duran recalled. “He had proof and showed me — ‘This is my business on the side, outside of teaching and seeing how I apply this in real life.’”
Duran’s journey in high school is how he slowly maneuvered himself into graphic design. He started creating logos and small designs for his friends. However, he explained he became serious during his senior year.
“That’s when I bought a laptop and started working on the senior yearbook and taking a second-year course in graphic design,” Duran said. “That’s when I started getting into brand design and found out it’s more than just a logo.”
During Duran’s senior year, he took three courses with Corey, one being business management. He also was a member of the Yearbook Club, which Corey spearheads.
Duran said Corey’s class helped him understand how design connects to real-world business, even with hands-on projects. In one assignment, he remembers creating products like candles and being responsible for branding them, including designing labels and thinking about how they would be marketed.
Corey added that his students create and market their own products, from building items in a woodshop to developing pricing and sales strategies. He also shows films such as “The Founder,” a 2016 biographical flick about McDonald’s, teaching marketing and business concepts.
After graduating in June 2024, Duran stayed in touch and later collaborated with Corey on a design project for Stall Mates, creating packaging for new products. Duran now runs his own brand design studio, working with clients to develop business identities.
“I like the brand and seeing him grow was amazing,” he added. “I want to work with businesses like this because I want to help people like Corey who have their own business. Branding is very important with every business.”
Corey said he encourages students to take risks and learn through experience, because he was in the same spot. He added that he was fearful at first because he wasn’t sure customers would like his product.
“I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and it still can be intimidating because you’re trying to come up with new products,” Corey said. “You have to spend money on those ideas and hope it works. What I try to teach them is trying and failing is better than not trying at all.”
By Stacy Driks