By Daniel Gao, staff writer
From selling fashion on Etsy to creating albums on Spotify, student-run businesses are on the rise, proving that age is just a number when it comes to entrepreneurs. What many thought these endeavors were far-reached are now achieved by these five featured student business owners.
Adrienne Lee (11) is the owner of the Instagram page (@adrienne.crystaldesigns), where she posts and exhibits genuine handmade gemstone jewelry that she makes in her free time. Adrienne’s jewelry business started out as a hobby where she enjoyed making bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and rings and decided to sell on Etsy, a marketplace that focuses on vintage and handmade products. Adrienne got inspired to start this business because she “wanted to make money in my own way and share my hobby of jewelry making.” The biggest obstacle Adrienne faced while running her business was second-guessing herself and putting herself out there. “At first, I was scared to market my shop on social media because I was worried about what people would think. However, I’ve since gotten over it and realized that it doesn’t matter because any criteria could ultimately benefit me.”
Tazu Luisi (12) takes pride in working with large Minecraft animation channels as a content director and cinematographer. He started tinkering with motion and graphic designs in middle school and then eventually learned to use Blender, a 3D creation tool. Growing up and watching the success of people in the same place, Tazu knew there was a general need for 3D animators so he got in touch with a few Minecraft animation channels that he had previously networked with before. When it comes to business, he said that “networking and making new people connections is probably the most important thing to be successful. I would never be able to work with these large channels if I never introduced myself.” With being on the co-production team for various Minecraft animation short movies, he received a lot of support from fellow youtube creators for creating his own youtube channel @helios animation studio. With that, his channel grew to 12.9k subscribers as of today and continues to grow. Tazu’s business has not only allowed him to pursue his passion for animation and design, but it has also provided him with valuable skills and experience that he can apply to any future endeavors. His hard work and dedication have paid off as he is now able to work with some of the biggest Minecraft animation channels in the industry and he continues to expand his business.
With the creator economy on the rise, Phoebe Zhang (12), runs @phobsterz a day in a life vlogging Youtube channel. With hobbies of videography and photography, she started vlogging her everyday life routines as a high schooler. With recently completing the Vlogmas challenge, where a person vlogs every single day for 25 days until Christmas, her subscriber count went from 149 to 166 as of currently writing this article. She notes that the consistency of having content uploads has pushed her content to a larger audience.
To the ocean, the moon, and back, Keanu Isip brings you into a soundscape to come alive with his music. With a versatility between making aggressive rap and making chill, ethereal, and bass-laden melodies, his tracks will have you grooving to the bass and falling in love with the tunes. He just had one of his first experiences of musical success. One of the songs he made last year, explicitly titled “killing mofos,” reached 50,000 streams last week.“I started uploading music during quarantine. I was alone and had a hard time expressing myself amidst these dark times. It sounded so bad at first, but as I learned the next two years of making music digitally and learned how to market my music, I grew to love rapping and “singing” on modern beats. I was like a gas planet floating in space. One that decided to evince my inner being into a glistening star for all that proceeding from the pandemic. And here I am now, with a consistent monthly audience of about 2,500 people and wanting more for myself. I’m still learning!”
On a personal note, after being inspired by many Tiktokers documenting their journey with dropshipping, I experimented with selling print-on-demand products through Shopify and Etsy. I designed T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs with Printify, an on-demand printing supplier, who ships my product designs directly to the customer. With dabbling into dropshipping, I found that it was incredibly convenient for my products to ship directly from the manufacturer to my buyers. By direct contacting social media theme pages for sponsorships and promotions, I was able to scale up my business within a few days. And to all the students out there, if you aspire to create your dream business, there is nothing like today to start.
