Photograph by Ben Rollins
Treandos Thornton was looking for a business idea to complement the food- and toy-drive holiday charity he’d just started. After admiring his father’s stylish bow ties, Treandos had a stroke of entrepreneurial inspiration. “I went downstairs and asked my mom if I could start a bow tie business,” he says. Treandos knew he’d need some help getting started. He was five years old, after all.
Atlanta has long been known as a mecca for business owners. A 2022 report by Axios found that the city had the second-highest rate of new business applications in the country. Many of these new business owners are young; some of them, in fact, are too young to sign their own business incorporation papers. All over the city, creative kids are finding ways to turn their interests into professional enterprises—usually with some help from their parents—and learning important lessons about responsibility and leadership along the way.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Treandos’s mom, Shana Thornton, admits she didn’t take her son’s idea seriously at first. “You know, one day kids want a dog, the next day they want a cat, then it’s a turtle,” she says with a laugh. She encouraged him to think about a name for the business, then expected him to forget all about it. To her surprise, he brought up his bow tie business idea the next day—and the day after that. “Here’s my kid, not even in kindergarten yet, and he kept asking about it! I said, There’s something to this.”
Together, they Googled “what does it take for a kid to start a business.” Seven years later, Treandos is the founder and CEO of T&N Bow Ties and Apparel, a bespoke purveyor of bow ties for kids and adults in a spiffy array of patterns, available online and at craft fairs. The company’s president is Treandos’s brother, Noah, who is nine.
Photograph by Amelia Jackson
When Lena Ford asked about starting her own craft business at age nine, her mom, Tressie Ford, wasn’t sure how things would go. “We have entrepreneurs in the family, but it wasn’t something that I ever thought about myself,” says Tressie. “But it’s something she was really interested in, and she could see that it was possible.”
Lena’s parents gave her a small loan, and that was all Lena needed to launch a full-fledged business. “She’s been like that pretty much with anything she’s touched in her life,” says Tressie. “If she’s interested in it, she’s going to figure out the best way to get it done.” Lena, now 15, has been running Positively Lena for nearly half her life. She sells a range of handmade crafts, from keychains and jewelry to notebooks and coloring books, as well as her children’s book, I Love Me . . . And That’s Okay, which she wrote when she was 12.
“I like being able to inspire people younger than me [by running a business],” says Lena. “I’ve had a couple younger kids come up to me and say that they want to start a business now because I came to talk to their school about it—even just knowing I put a smile on their face, it’s really rewarding to me.”
Some kid business ideas are easier to execute than others. Because Lena makes most of her Positively Lena products at home herself, she and Tressie handle most of the business responsibilities, taking orders and shipping packages from their house. They often go to craft fairs and holiday markets, where Lena handles most of the sales. In fact, she says, the hardest part of running her own business is that people often think it’s her mom’s project.
“I have a banner with my face on it, but people will still walk over to her, because people just think, I’m a kid, how could I run my own business?” Lena says, smiling. “I mean, if my face is on the banner, you’d think someone would understand I’m the owner!”
Photograph by Ryan Coleman for Beautiful Curly Me
When Zoe Oli had an idea to make a new kind of doll, her mom, Evana, knew they were in for a more complicated business venture. Zoe, who was six at the time, was going through a period of disliking her hair. “I wanted it to be straight like my classmates’ hair,” says Zoe. Evana tried all sorts of things to boost her daughter’s self-confidence, including buying her a Black doll. “I loved that doll, but I noticed she didn’t have hair like mine, either,” Zoe says. “I went to the store to find dolls with curls and braids, and when I couldn’t find any, I decided that I wanted to make my own.”
With Evana’s help, Zoe found a manufacturer, who made a prototype based on Zoe’s ideas. By the time she was seven, her vision had become the company Beautiful Curly Me, which sells several types of dolls with hair that reflects the textures and styles of Black girls’ hair.
Beautiful Curly Me is now a considerable enterprise, with dolls available through online retailers such as Amazon and in stores at Target. As the business grows, they’ve added a fulfillment team to help. But Zoe, now 12, is still heavily involved; she works full-time during the summer, and on weekends or after school during the school year. “She’s definitely the boss,” says Evana of her daughter. “I’m there as the adult in the room, but I love that everyone we work with respects her as an entrepreneur.”
When Target was considering adding Beautiful Curly Me to its toy department, Zoe pitched the company herself. “I was extremely nervous—I was like, Oh my gosh, this is Target!” says Zoe. “But it was very exciting just to see that they were interested.”
Photograph courtesy of Kiid Coffee
Like most “kidpreneurs,” Zoe had a specific vision for what she wanted her product to look like—an asset when marketing a business idea to other kids. For Ethan Sanborn, who created Kiid Coffee with his dad, David, there was no point in trying to sell their unique, almost caffeine-free nutritional supplement if he didn’t like the taste of it first. “We have one that kind of tastes like hot chocolate,” says Ethan, who is eight. “And the caramel one is pretty sweet, but not really sweet.” He shrugs. “It tastes like coffee, but for kids!”
Ethan and his brother, Logan, taste-test samples when they arrive from the manufacturer, giving David a thumbs-up or thumbs-down that helps him steer the flavor toward something kids will actually drink. “We were trying to find a way for them to get more [essential vitamins],” explains David. Ethan had recently broken his leg, and then, a year later, the other leg (“That was a bad week,” recalls Ethan). Kids drink much less dairy milk than in the past, and David and his wife soon learned just how difficult it is to get children, especially picky eaters, a full daily dose of vitamins and minerals.
Ethan, meanwhile, was interested in starting a business. “First he wanted to do a lemonade stand, then it was selling Pokémon cards online,” says David. Ethan had always liked the taste of a bit of coffee mixed with milk, and when he suggested they make coffee for kids, David saw a genuinely smart business idea. Kiid Coffee, available online, now comes in three flavors, which are mixed in milk, have no added sugar, and provide a healthy dose of calcium and other vitamins and minerals that are crucial for kids’ development.
In addition to taste testing, Ethan works on marketing videos for Kiid Coffee and has gone on factory visits with his dad. David, who went to Georgia Tech and has launched several start-ups, thinks the entrepreneurial experience offers great lessons kids don’t have the chance to learn in school. “After Georgia Tech, I wanted to start a company, but I didn’t even know where to learn those skills,” says David. “I think the earlier he gets a chance to be exposed to all of it, then he can make a full choice to decide [what he wants to do].”
His future career may or may not be in business. Like most kid entrepreneurs, Ethan is still figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up (on this particular day, he was considering becoming a scientist or the inventor of a flying car). But every kid business owner seems to agree that running their own enterprise is worth the time spent on content creation, product design, and all the other hassles of the marketplace.
“I hope to run my business forever,” says Treandos Thornton. “But I also have some other business ideas for the future.” Next up in his ideation pipeline? “I want to get into plants.”
This article appears in our December 2024 issue.
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