Young Entrepreneur - Sadie Rose Zavgren
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or subscribe via e-mail. Thanks for visiting!
If you’re wondering where to find business ideas for kids, you need only look around at the creative ways kids make money already.
With great care, Sadie Rose Zavgren handcrafts striped fleece hats using a pattern she designed herself. Each hat takes about an hour and a half to make, and each one is a labor of love, a study in color and a testament to the craftsmanship of its maker.
In February, she began selling the handmade hats on her Web site, DoYouLikeMyHats.com, and in a little less than three months, she has sold more than 50 hats to customers from all over the U.S. and even as far away as the U.K.
She does all the sewing herself and handles all the financial aspects of the business, from ordering raw materials to shipping product. For now, she offers only her specially designed hats, though she may branch out to capes in the future. She certainly has plenty of time; after all, Sadie Rose Zavgren is only 11 years old …
This story appeared in the Nashua Telegraph in April, 2005, and you can read the rest of it here. Since then, Sadie has gone from strength to strength. By 2006, she had started to outsource manufacturing, and by 2007, she was having to cut back on personalising each and every individual design.
Sadie’s hats are incredibly long, brightly colored, striped felt beanies, reminiscent of the Cat in The Hat’s famous hat.
“I used to let people customize their hats but it got to be too much,” Sadie Rose told The Monadnock Ledger in January, 2007. “About two months ago, I changed the website and I have my whole inventory on my website.”
She markets her traditional hat at a cost of $30, and now also offers a new design that costs $36 because it includes a little pocket on the outside brim of the hat for carrying iPods, gum or keys.
Sadie Rose has invested some of her earnings in the stock market.
“I was doing great, but stocks went down last week,” she told The Cabinet a few days ago.
What a great example to aspiring young entrepreneurs!
Sadie Rose started out doing something she loved - sewing - and responded to market demand when she set up her business. She is saving a large proportion of her earnings, and now she is learning how to invest for her long-term security. And she’s still only fourteen!
You can see more of Sadie Rose and her hats at http://www.doyoulikemyhats.com
