Lily Sandler smiles -- just a little, because she is explaining to complete strangers how she and her little sister, Melanie, became founders of Blamtastic, a bustling lip-balm business, when she’s still trying to get used to the idea herself.
And so here goes: One day when Lily was about 9 she was looking for her trusty little tube of wax, and instead of asking "Where is my lip balm?" it came out "Where is my lip blam?"
Next thing you know, she and Melanie were cooking up wax and flavoring on the kitchen stove and, before long, selling their own brand of lip balm.
The middle school CEOs from Alpharetta, ages 11 and 13, are part of a growing number of kids who are starting businesses long before they can even get a driver’s license.
No one can say for sure how many such businesses exist, but they say there has definitely been a surge in startups by entrepreneurs 18 and under.
“I am sure that the number of kids starting businesses has increased in the last five and 10 years due to technology advances, social media and due to economic realities,” said Sarah Cook, the founder of Raising CEO Kids, an online resource for parents and educators.
Those businesses, Cook said, include the expected lawn-mowing and pet-sitting operations, but they also take in ventures such as web design, book writing, public speaking and real estate investment.
Motivation by Mom
While it was Lily’s slip of the tongue that spawned Blamtastic, it was the sisters’ mother, Renee, who planted the seed for the lip-balm venture.
It began, Renee Sandler said, one day while reading a Wall Street Journal article about the number of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies.
“In 2007, there were only 12,” Sandler recalled. “When I saw that number, I went ‘what?' Women make up 50 percent of the work force, and there are only 12 female CEOs at Fortune 500s?”
Sandler, 44, said she immediately thought of Lily and Melanie.
“What do you think about that?” she asked them.
“That stinks,” they told her.
Sandler told them if they ever had an idea for a business, they had her full support.
A few months later, while searching for her lip balm and then discovering its potentially dangerous ingredients, Lily came up with a business concept.
They started researching the market and what ingredients they would use in their own product.
In a big pot, they mixed aloe, bees wax and a variety of flavorings on the kitchen stove, and through trial and error they determined the tastes and smells they liked and those they didn’t.
They cooked up 12 flavors, including "OMG" (as in "Oh My Grape"), "Lemon Licious" and green-apple-flavored "Alien Invasion."
They tested them at their school and in their neighborhood.
“We got pretty good reaction,” Lily said.
‘A great impulse item'
In November 2007, they officially launched Blamstastic in the family’s basement.
They sold the lip balm for the first time at the fall fair at Ocee Elementary School before renting a kiosk at nearby North Point Mall.
“We wanted to see if it would sell in a retail environment and it did,” Renee Sandler said.
In January 2008, they decided to test their product at the Atlanta International Gift Show.
It was there that the sisters landed their first retail store partnership with the Learning Express in Alpharetta and east Cobb County.
“We keep it at our front counter, and it's a great impulse item," said Cindy O'Hara, the store's owner. "Kids love it. Their moms love it. And I personally use it."
Shortly after she started selling the product, O'Hara said she decided to share it with other Learning Express stores across the country.
"It's been a top seller for us since 2009," she said.
Today, after selling nearly a quarter-million tubes of lib balm at $2.99 apiece, Blamtastic is in more than 1,000 stores across the United States, Canada and South Korea.
“When we started, it was kinda for fun,” Lily said. “It didn’t seem like a big fancy business. Now we have our own warehouse and factory. It all snowballed.”
Despite its swift success, Renee Sandler said she encourages Lily and Melanie to focus on being kids and to explore their passions.
Lily likes the theater and riding horses, and Melanie enjoys playing softball and the bass guitar.
“Lip balm can’t be their life,” said Sandler, a former legal assistant turned stay-at-home mom. “We could work 24 hours a day. I have to pull it back and say girls go have fun.”
Even so, Sandler said, this experience has been invaluable to Lily and Melanie. It has taught them how difficult it is to make a living and how important it is to have a strong work ethic.
And then there is this, she said: “Rather than someone in corporate America determining their worth, they get to do that for themselves.”
About the Author
