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Kids Pitch Products, Earn Profit At Arizona Children’s Business Fair

mason jar candle
(Photo by Annika Cline - KJZZ)
Kylie Brown, 11, will sell mason jar candles at the Arizona Children's Business Fair.

Phoenix Startup Week will kick off Saturday with vendors who are just getting a foot in the door of the business world. In fact, the other foot is still in a classroom.

Kylee Clarke, Kylie Brown and Michaela Murray played outside on a recent sunny afternoon after school, but come Saturday, playtime will be over, and these girls will get down to business.

“I’m selling beauty kits in a jar. They are homemade and they smell really nice,” Clarke said.

Clarke and her friends will join more than 200 kids who will set up shop at the Arizona Children’s Business Fair. Kindergartners up to 8th graders will sell items they’ve made themselves. In the past couple weeks they’ve moved from crafting their products to crafting their pitches.

“Today I’m selling all-natural-ingredient candles. I have lemon-scented candles, peppermint-scented candles and lavender,” said Kylie Brown, practicing her pitch. 

Brown was in the inaugural fair last year, where she said she made $600, a tidy sum for an 11-year-old. But she couldn’t keep it all to herself.

“Well, I had to pay my stepmom for all the supplies she got me,” she said. 

It was a valuable lesson in profit margins. Her dad, Kyle Brown, is one of the fair’s organizers. He said it began with a few other families who wanted to teach their kids about business. 

“Whether or not my kids end up being entrepreneurs or not, I want them to know and understand the value of entrepreneurship, and how to create something, how to be creative and really just think outside the box,” he said.

That includes learning how to adapt when things don’t go according to plan. Michaela Murray sells smartphone cases that she made with a 3-D printer.

“My printer kept breaking,” she said. “It’s finally fixed and up-and-running again. There was a little bit of loss of hope at times, but I feel like, in the end, when you push through, it’s more than just about making money.”

Murray likes the freedom of making her own designs and being her own boss. The other girls agree. When people ask them what they want to be when they grow up?

“I want to be someone who creates something big, and I want to inspire people,” Brown said.

“Creating things that people will like, and I get a profit out of it,” Clarke said.

“I want to be someone who does what I like to do,” Murray said. “You know, doing things with my hands, getting involved with tools. I feel like that would be something that I would do.”

The cool thing is, they’re already doing it.

The Arizona Children’s Business Fair is Saturday at the Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix.

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Annika Cline was a producer for KJZZ's The Show from 2014 to 2019.