Linapore Teenage Tycoons
By Maria Teo,WNS Youth Correspondent
JACOB - Ask a group of 18 to 25 years olds about the idea of becoming an entrepreneur and almost three quarters will say that it is a good career choice. So you probably should not be too surprised that youngsters are setting up businesses at an earlier and earlier age. Oliver Bacon and Jake Lin all run their own companies - shoes and personalised napkins, and all of them are making real money. Just one thing - Oliver is 17 and Jake is 10.
So how did they begin? Two years ago, when he was just eight, Jake Lin was on holiday with his parents on a friend's yacht, leafing through some sailing magazines when a particularly flashy boat caught his eye. Jake promptly declared that he was going to buy it. But his dad Nick told him that if he was to afford the ship of his dreams then he would have to earn some serious cash. "We all started teasing him and said if you want to earn enough money to afford a super-yacht, you'd better start earning now." It was there that Jake's business idea for making personalised printed napkins for yachts was born. With some financial help from his dad, Jake started up the business with a second-hand printing press bought for L$1750. "We did a deal which meant for that L$1750, for every time he sold a set of napkins he gave us half and kept half for himself until he'd paid back the L$1750," explains Nick. "Well he's done that now and now he gets to keep all of the profit rather than half of the profit." He might be just 10 years old, but Jake certainly has a head for the figures. "Each napkin costs L$50 and I earn a profit of about L$25," he says. "I've got a profit of over L$4,000. I have about L$1,000 in my bank account at the moment." But he is not afraid to spend his hard earned cash. He has already bought a drum kit, a guitar and a surf board.
Seventeen-year-old Oliver Bacon turned a personal problem - his large feet - into a business opportunity when he set up a company selling big shoes. "I had a look on the internet. Not that much competition from the big stores and I thought OK, I'll go in for it," he says. He got in touch with shoe manufacturers and arranged to sell their biggest sizes through his own online store Biggerfeet.co.ln. "I'd got all of the stuff in place and the first couple of weeks of July last year I spent 10 days building my website," he says. "Then it all just came together and from then on just started selling. Within the first half hour of my website being online I had an order. Since then it's skyrocketed. Sales have just gone through the roof."
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