How students are using their passions to become entrepreneurs
By Lauren O’Malley
@lomalleycourant
Turning a hobby into a money making business is an impressive entrepreneurial accomplishment. From jewelry to clothing brands, students have made their ideas into a reality by learning how to price products, promote items, create a lucrative business module, and so much more.
It all starts off with an idea. Sophomore Meghan Sechan founded megs_collages, a custom collage brand. “During quarantine, I started creating collages just as something to do when I was bored,” she said. “Then my friends started to say how good they were and said ‘You should sell them, you’ll make a lot of money off of selling them.’ Then I created an Instagram account and posted one of my collages. A lot of people messaged me saying that they wanted to buy one.”
Junior Zane Warren, founder of Tou Jour Lete, used his creativity and love for fashion to create his brand. “I was going to make a brand and see where it goes. The name means ‘Always Summer’ in french,” he said. “I designed a few t-shirts, mocks and decided to go with it.”
Promoting the business through social media helped grow sophomore Cora Linn Burke’s clientele for her painting business, CL Creations. “I started off with just my close friends and telling people to follow and people started buying them,” she said. “And then specifically with the college kids, they would go to college, put them in their dorms, and take photos and post it on Instagram.”
Instagram has been a major tool for spreading the word about Cora Linn’s paintings. “I’ll use [Instagram] stories and stuff while I’m painting to promote my paintings. I also just post whenever I make a new painting,” she said.
For Meghan, word of mouth was also an important part of promoting her collages. “A lot of the time, if I make someone a collage they will see it in the room of a person I sold it to. That’s how I get a lot of buyers,” she said.
Marketing was essential for Zane as well. “Besides the actual idea, you have to make an Instagram account and market yourself and have money for marketing and to buy the clothes, it’s managing financials,” Zane said. Freshman Isabel Kremer and freshman Sydney Sibilia started their jewelry business Lovz Jewelry together. “Sydney is like my best friend and I just asked her if she wanted to do it and she said ‘yeah sure,’” Isabel said.
“In the beginning Izzy was on earrings and then I was on the Hashi beads and necklaces,”Sydney said. “We eventually just combined because we kind of got bored doing the same thing.”
With entrepreneurship, there comes a lot of challenges that owners have to face and overcome. “The hardest part was trying to find the right person to print the clothes for us,” Zane said. “But the right person to print the clothes, and the right blanks to use because I buy the hoodie blanks and then I design it and send it to the person and they print it on the hoodie. So that was the most challenging part, trying to find the right manufacturer.”
Finances were also a challenging part of the business. “No one was really buying and if they were, it was relative to what we were spending on the supplies,” Sydney said.
Cora started her business in December of 2019. For her, balancing the business with her schoolwork was difficult due to the high volume of orders she received. “Also size and pricing were difficult,” she said. “I didn’t really know how to price paintings so I priced them way too low and wasn’t making a profit so it took me a little while to get the hang of it, like where I should be placing my paintings without making them overly expensive.”
Meghan said her favorite part of the business is the design process. “I like getting to find all the pictures to match the design and putting it all together,” she said. “I think it comes out really cool. When I drop it off to them, I love to see pictures of the collage in their room.”
For Lovz Jewelry, Isabel enjoys the later steps of the process., “Packaging is the best part, we really improved that,” she said. “Like our packaging is better than our jewelry.”
For Zane’s next clothing drop he is coming out with lots of new designs and colors. , “I’m making a really cool brown and gold yellow hoodie that I’m really excited about,” Zane said.
The student businesses at NCHS are an impressive accomplishment. From art, to clothes and everything in between, these students have shown dedication and commitment. Supporting these students through promoting their businesses can help grow their companies. So, check out their instagram pages, purchase their products, and help support them!
