Redondo Beach pre-teens were busy arranging homemade merchandise on long tables, counting money, and turning on smiles for potential customers last Friday, working diligently at a makeshift market inside a church on Broadway.
The girls were excited. Their products were selling, and quickly.
“Sorry, I don’t have any more of those headbands,” nine-year-old Sam Sternberg said. “They’re, like, a thing right now.”
Her company, I Mustache U – a play on “I Must Ask You,” she told me – sells clothing and accessories emblazoned with felt mustaches.
Ten-year-old Laura Hong was also apologetic; her clothes were selling out, and she had dollar signs in her eyes.
“This is my favorite,” she said, taking a dress off the rack behind her. “It’s six dollars but sorry, somebody bought it. This is a jacket that could also be a blanket,” she said, looking at me with apology. “This one is being sold too, sorry” – she said, but, not wanting to lose business or brand recognition, added quickly – “I mean, I can give you a candy!”
Ten-year-old Sheyla Jacobs explained that her wearable products inspire fellow tweens to express themselves.
“The whole reason is to make people feel that they can be themselves and be unique,” she said. “It’s okay to be different. I’m crazy and I like crazy stuff so I just take paint and splat it all over my projects.”
Nine-year-old Kilyn Cvulewicc had fashioned wallets out of duct tape, a creative endeavor she said “shows my personality, that I know how to make things.”
This was the culmination of the girls’ week at Bizzy Girls camp, a venture Deborah Kanafani began in luxury malls last year.
A psychotherapist by trade, Kanafani worked for years to empower women locally and abroad, becoming a bestselling author in the process. One book she wrote about a young entrepreneur triggered a flood of feedback, so she saw a market and tapped into it, creating entrepreneurship programs for tweens.
“Empowerment has to start when girls are young. I think this is the new young girl,” she said, gesturing at the busy businesswomen hawking their products. “She wants to be empowered and be independent and have her own money.”
Campers create their own product lines, write a business plan, create logos, learn about branding and sales, and hear testimony from successful female entrepreneurs. The program is open to girls between seven and 12 years old.
For more information about Kanafani’s camps, visit bizzygirls.com.
