Tomorrow's Tycoons

By Lori Aratani
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 26, 2007

They are so over the corner lemonade stand.

These days, teenage entrepreneurs in the Washington area prefer more sophisticated ventures. And some are running businesses that net thousands of dollars a year.

The Internet has given them the ability to market their products with very little overhead. It has also provided cachet in a business world that doesn't always trust youth.

Their numbers are growing. In the Washington region, enrollment in the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship's programs that help students launch businesses has gone from 200 youths in 1994 to 2,000 today.

"I believe that young people today realize that they will likely not have one career and that they need to build themselves a marketable brand," said Julie Kantor, the foundation's executive director for the Washington region. Here are profiles of three local teenagers who have launched their own businesses.

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Aaron Sacks

Age: 16

Personalized Playing Cards

Sixteen-year-old Aaron Sacks has built a successful business by cutting corners.

Not the kind of cutting that attracts the attention of, say, the feds, but the kind that keeps your customers from getting injured when they handle your product.

This is how it happened:

About the time Aaron, a junior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, was preparing to launch his personalized playing-card sales business, You're On Deck, he discovered a problem with the cards he was selling over the Internet: The corners were too sharp. Aaron worried that sharp corners could mean bloody fingers.

The solution was his first major business investment: a corner-cutting machine, purchased with money from his first major investor: Grandma Barbara.

Aaron had researched many possibilities before he settled on the personalized playing-card business. He'd fantasized about opening an arcade or some kind of sports facility, but franchise fees were far beyond a teenager's reach. So he chose an idea closer to home.

He decided to cash in on the poker craze that's swept across the country. Judging from the reception the family received when it distributed souvenir decks of cards at his brother Jacob's Bar Mitzvah, he had a hunch he could succeed with a business selling personalized decks.

Customers send Aaron the photographs or logos they want printed on their cards. He then prints them out on special paper, using the printing shop his parents run out of their Wheaton home.

Aaron has a shy, low-key manner. But get him talking about You're On Deck ( http://yodcards.com), and he shifts into sales mode.

He says his cards are inexpensive. Most business require a minimum order of maybe 20 decks, but Aaron will sell you as few as five. According to his Web site, the price per deck ranges from $5 for five to $2 for 250.

Although many playing cards come in cardboard boxes, his are in plastic containers, which protect them and make it easier to get to them. They're also classier, he says.

"If you want to convince other people you're the best and to buy from you, you have to believe you're the best," Aaron said.

Aaron suspects his first customer bought cards from him as a favor for his parents.

"They bought 10 decks at first, and I knew they were just being nice," he said. "When they ordered 75 more, I knew they really liked them."

Most people who purchase cards through his Web site don't realize they're dealing with a teenager, at least not until he shows up to personally deliver the decks. His mother or father usually drives him, because he doesn't have a license.

Youth could be a marketing advantage. Judges at a recent business competition were so wowed by his fledgling business that they hooked him up with his biggest job to date: 1,000 decks featuring a drawing of former D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, which were given to those who attended his roast.

"I was surprised it took off the way it did," said Aaron's father, David. "But he can think well on his feet, which is the key for selling."

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Casey Reichl

Age: 18

Gourmet Dog Treats

Casey Reichl got her start baking people food but is hoping to make her fortune baking for dogs.

The 18-year-old senior at Marshall High School in Falls Church is confident that people willing to shell out $225 for a doggie trench coat from Burberry will be more than happy to drop a few extra bucks for her gourmet dog treats.

Early this year, she launched Casey's Canine Cuisine. Corporate headquarters is the Vienna home she shares with her parents, sister, brother, three dogs, five birds and rabbit. Once, sometimes twice, a week -- depending on her lacrosse schedule -- Casey commandeers the family kitchen. Using mother Diane's KitchenAid mixer, she creates savory batches of garlic treats, Chicken Lickers, Beef Barkers and Snickerpoodles. She hand-cuts and frosts each biscuit.

On this rainy March day, two of her taste testers -- Cooper and Tyson -- were weaving between her legs and nudging her hip with their wet noses in search of samples.

"I don't know how they know what I'm doing," she said as she grabbed a couple of biscuits off the rack and tossed them to the dogs.

Casey said she did "a ton of research" before launching her gourmet canine biscuit line. She scoured the Internet and cruised the aisles of PetSmart. Sure, the store sells biscuits, but they weren't very imaginative.

"The dog business is getting so popular," she said. "Even Gucci makes things for dogs."

According to a survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturing Association, people in the United States spent $34.4 billion on their pets in 2004. The bulk of that -- $14.2 billion -- was spent on food.

Casey tried to make her treats distinctive by offering one variety few companies seem to offer: biscuits for the dentally challenged.

Her Snickerpoodles are designed for older dogs with, ahem, dental problems. Her inspiration was her dog Pulu, who had gingivitis as a puppy and as a result had nine teeth removed. Because the future isn't looking particularly bright for the bichon frise's remaining choppers, Casey needed to come up with a solution.

Snickerpoodles are soft biscuits that look a great deal like real snickerdoodle cookies (and even have some of the same ingredients, such as cinnamon). The resemblance is so striking that she fed some to her brother's unsuspecting friends. ("They ate them. They just said they tasted a little strange.")

Last week, she scored one of her first major marketing coups when Black Eyed Susan, a gift shop not far from her home, agreed to stock her gourmet biscuits. A Web site is on the horizon.

"It's something I love to do, so I figured, why not do it all the time?"

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Thomas Dant Jr.

Age: 17

Photography

When Thomas Dant Jr. launched his photography business Fine Foto last year, his plan was to hire his skills out to people who needed his services.

But after a panel of judges at a local business competition saw some of his work, they encouraged the teenager, now a senior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, to sell his original photographs rather than the work others had hired him to do.

Already, Thomas's fledgling photography business is turning a profit. Last year, he sold 10 of his photographs, netting about $1,000 in gross sales. With a Web site ( http://finefoto.org), a gallery show next month and prices of up to $1,000 for one of his photographs, he's hoping to earn a bit more in 2007.

His secret? Connections.

"It's all about networking and who you know," he said, repeating an adage familiar to those in the business world. Most of his customers have been adults he has met through student competitions, at which he touts his business plan or shows his work.

"I see talent in this young man, and I see opportunity for him," said Marsha Ralls, president of the Ralls Collection, a Georgetown gallery.

Ralls was so impressed with Thomas after seeing him at a competition that she will exhibit his work in her gallery next month. The photographs will be priced between $600 and $1,000, Ralls said.

Thomas, 17, wasn't certain he'd be able to make a go of an enterprise focused exclusively on art. He had seen firsthand the pitfalls of trying to launch a business. His father, Thomas Sr., had launched several start-ups before finding success in real estate.

He wasn't even certain what to charge for his work. "I honestly didn't know how to price them," he said. "This all comes from the word of art gallery owners."

After he graduates in June, Thomas plans to attend the University of Maryland, where he expects to major in business.

Thomas's first collection of photographs includes black-and-white portraits of a Rockville firefighter, who happens to be his older sister, Amy. He calls the collection "Passion for the Planet." The 10 photographs each reflect a one-word theme, such as "strength," "sacrifice" and "innocence."

"He's still an amateur photographer who is still pretty raw in his approach," said Ralls, who gets thousands of e-mails a year from artists hoping to show their work in her 1,500-square-foot gallery. But there was something about this floppy-haired teenager that grabbed her. "He's got talent. He's got some very strong images that he's already sold."

Thomas began taking photographs when he was 8. He used an old Nikon camera an uncle had given him.

In the end, his goal is quite simple: "I want to take pictures and have people love them as much as I do."