Young entrepreneurs Jaida Stamp, left, and Nick McReavy participate in the Kids Biz Club at Excelsior Elementary School. PHOTO: MARK TROCKMAN
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Students from the Kids Biz program will be selling their wares on Saturday, Nov. 15 between noon and 2 p.m. inside several retail establishments in downtown Excelsior.
All of their items were chosen with the theme "holiday gifts for teachers."
"Do women like this?" asked a third. He held up a cellophane bag of dried wood chips and flower petals.
The group of 12 fourth and fifth graders suddenly fell quiet. None of them - not the boys or the girls - were sure of the answer. What was in the bag? And did women like it?
"That's potpourri, and yes, women like it," answered their teacher, Kris Solie-Johnson. Her answer caused an excited stirring amongst the kids. It was exactly the response they had hoped to hear.
Each of these students was designing a retail store. One of their first lessons had covered the importance of providing merchandise that would appeal to their target market. Their target market was women, hence the candles, lotion and potpourri.
This unit in boutique management is not a part of the regular school-day curriculum. Instead, it is part of an after-school program called Kids Biz, which teaches entrepreneurial skills.
The program runs four weeks and by the time it is finished, the participating students will have crafted a business plan and a marketing strategy for a specialty retail outlet. Plus, they will have put their plans into action.
Store owners in downtown Excelsior allow Kids Biz students to set up shop within their boutiques for one Saturday.
After subtracting expenses, the kids get to keep whatever profit they make. Each one of them hopes to walk away with a stack of cold hard cash.
And it might actually happen. When Kids Biz ran last spring, Nate Steckman went home with $60.
He was in fourth grade then and that money, he said with a sigh, ended up in his bank account.
Now that he's a fifth grader, he hopes to rake in a lot more. He also hopes that his parents will let him have a little fun with whatever money he makes. He'd like to buy a video game with some of his hard-earned profits.
Steckman is motivated. He's also confident. "I like selling," he said. "You have to talk and use your marketing skills. You have to jump on people as soon as they come in the door."
Solie-Johnson, Steckman's teacher, smiled when she overheard this comment. The boy's outright enthusiasm for the project at hand is exactly what she imagined when she started the Kids Biz program two years ago.
An entrepreneur herself, Solie-Johnson has penned many books for small business owners. Her titles cover a wide range of start-up concerns like how to secure financing, how to write a business plan, how to maximize e-mail marketing, and how to make money through Web site advertising.
She also teaches online classes for adults interested in these topics through the American Institute of Small Business, an organization she founded and runs in Shorewood.
"Because of my interest in the topic," Solie-Johnson said, "I started doing research on some of the most well-known entrepreneurs today ... Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Michael Dell."
"Turns out that all of them had successful businesses when they young, when they were 12 or 13. Michael Dell traded and sold baseball cards on consignment for his friends and Warren Buffet sold cold pop to construction workers on site," she said.
"As a mother, I started thinking about how I could help my own kids experience entrepreneurship at an early age," Solie-Johnson said. "Could I figure out a way to expose them to business and almost guarantee their success?"
What she came up with is Kids Biz. This fall marks the third time she has led students through the process.
Currently, the program is only offered at Excelsior Elementary School. This is where Solie-Johnson's own children attend school, which made it easy for her to pitch the idea to the principal and secure a meeting space.
In the future, she'd like to grow Kids Biz and offer it as an after-school program in other buildings and for students of different ages. For now, though, she is happy with the smaller set-up as it has allowed her to hammer out a solid curriculum.
Here's how it works. Every participating student starts with $25.
Before any selling can take place, each child must subtract $1 to pay the rent on their retail space. Next, $2 gets subtracted to fund marketing efforts. That means $22 is left over.
Solie-Johnson takes that $22 to a nearby dollar store and buys items that the students will markup and resell. Deciding how much of a markup each item can carry is part of the Kids Biz learning process.
Once their stock has been selected and priced, the students spend one Saturday working inside an Excelsior boutique. Store owners allow the children space in their stores to try their hand at working with customers and making a sale.
At the end of the selling period, students count up their cash. They figure expenses and keep the rest.
"There is a lot of learning that goes on in a very short period of time," Solie-Johnson said. "The kids learn the concept of buy-low-sell-high. They learn about what they can and can not control as retailers. It rained on the day that we did this last spring, which really slowed foot traffic in Excelsior."
"The whole idea is to gently push the kids into a new environment, one where they might be a little uncomfortable, because that's where the most learning takes place," Solie-Johnson said. "Of course, they all gain a whole new appreciation for money, too."
Yes, the money has proven a fantastic motivator, so much so that several Kids Biz students have repeated the program.
Solie-Johnson welcomes returning students alongside every new participant; each one helps inspire her own continued entrepreneurship.
"The kids just jump right in and grab hold of an idea," Solie-Johnson said. "They're eager to try, and they'll try just about anything. Adults get hung up on making everything perfect. An adult who is making a flyer gets all worried about color scheme and logo placement to fit their perfect vision. Kids don't do that. It's refreshing."
