Slime Designer Shops: The Modern Lemonade Stands For Kids
We all passed lemonade stands growing up, set up in front of supermarkets or malls, or just around the corner from our houses. The kids were entrepreneurs-in-training, while proud moms and dads looked over their shoulders to see how they performed while trying to make the sale. It was supposed to teach young people the valuable lessons of making a sale and making a profit. Yes, you are in business!
While you’d still see the familiar stalls from time to time, kids these days are interested in more exotic lines of business, apps, computer games, and… drool, yes drool! My 12-year-old son has taken over an entire closet that he’s transformed into a storage vault with extra shelves to store endless plastic containers of various sizes, all filled with all sorts of regular and exotic colors of… slime . With these come supplies of “cotton candy” and many other artificial jewels like emblems and things to imitate cactus, Boba drink balls, “crystal waters”, “pizza heart”, “cactus cereal”, “fruit salad” , including gold “Winnie the Pooh” poopsie slime surprise unicorn, whatever! I’m like speechless, I feel like I’ve been thrown into a super slime simulator. Of course, any self-respecting business would have the appropriate slime video collection, hence its endless time to record everything on video on iPhone. The finished goods are in plastic jars looking so delicious that many times I found myself grabbing one of them off the kitchen counter to eat, only realizing at the last minute that this can actually kill you if you eat it!
I said “hey little bit ma’am, what do you do with all these things?” At first the answer was: “I’m making them to give them to my friends.” ok, it is not a big thing. But after a while, when I realized that I was spending some money monthly on these things, I was like “what’s up?”. To which she replied, “Oh, I started a slime company, I’m going into the slime business.” I said, “okWhat? Well wouldn’t you know? She already had a… website in this business group called Etsy (she had never heard of it). I said, why not Amazon or Google? very very cheap
I said, ok, let me see your website. Boom: bit.ly/CosmaSlimes. I said wow, how old are you again? I said, Oceana, I’m so impressed! You know, at your age, I didn’t even think they were computers, or that they were the size of this closet, but you, outside of your laptop doing all this, impressive! I got a “duh” response. Before I even ask her about her “traffic” and stuff, she says, “I already have 3 sales.” I’m thinking – Get out! You mean I don’t have to spend all that money on your college? Yeah, I can finally buy that Ferrari! She says, not so fast dad, it’s only $27 something. Yeah, but pumpkin, if you can make 3 sales, you can make 30, then 3,000, then 3 million, the sky’s the limit! Well, you understand. I already want the time i got reincarnated as a slime!
The important lesson in all of this is that she is learning about business, marketing, marketing analytics, profit loss, etc. In addition to this, she is learning about how to optimize traffic to her website, about coordinating activities that can drive traffic to her site. She learned that if I write this article I will drive even more traffic to her website, since I am referencing her link here and spewing high-traffic keywords I got from Google Insights all over the place.
I am thinking, what is the potential of this person to be successful in business? I stress to her that it all depends on her, it all depends on the effort she puts in, the energy and enthusiasm, the discipline and the willingness to listen and learn and apply what she learns to her business. Some of these learnings will spill over into your everyday life and relationships.
In the end, one thing is for sure: you can learn a lot by learning how to make slime: learn about success and failure, about family and about life itself. Good luck girl. Glad to see you like lemonade too.
Signed: Your daddy, who loves you baby?