Last Saturday morning, For the Culture held its inaugural Youth Entrepreneur Pop-Up shop. It was inspiring to see 18 youth entrepreneurs set up their displays with products from handmade soaps, artwork, dog treats, and popsicles! (I could go on, but you get the picture!)
Our goal for this experience was to allow children ages 7-18 to develop their own brand and marketing strategy while learning customer service, product inventory, and foundational entrepreneurship skills in a real-life setting.
We opened the application for vendors a month ago on our website. The application asked several questions about their product or service, the cost versus profit, their goals, and how they planned to market their business for the event. Once their application was approved then they hit the ground running.
It was great to see the business owners gaining confidence speaking to customers. Most importantly it was great to see these young people practice new practical skills like communication, money handling, elevator speeches, and negotiation skills.
As the event went on, we even had one youth vendor sell out completely! The entrepreneurs did inspire kids who came to shop at the event to start brainstorming a business to be a part of the next Pop-up shop. We were able to start an list of kids interested in participating in the next event.
We want to take a moment to thank all of our parents! The parents were an amazing support system throughout this whole process. We could not have had the experience that we did without your help.
What’s next? We hope to host a Youth Entrepreneur Pop-Up in the spring of 2023 and include a workshop opportunity that will help them develop a detailed marketing package, techniques for booth setup and presentation, and game-changing product pitches. Stay tuned!
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