Books, Beads, and Bouquets - Students with Small Businesses

Sofia Mang, Delisa Troupe

In this episode, host Sofia Mang sits down with Northview students who own small businesses, Sara Hsu (@shopsukico) and Sarah Chow and Vicky Kang (@flowersby.kc), as they explore what they've learned from the experience. Listen on Spotify or Apple Music.

Sofia Mang: Hello, and welcome to Point of View, where we give students a place to listen, learn and lean in. I'm your host Sofia Mang, and on today's episode of Beads, Books, and Bouquets, we will be discussing small businesses that students at Northview run themselves, and how they balance school life and being a business owner. So guys, please introduce yourself, your name, your grade, and the name of your small business along with the products that you sell.

Sara Hsu: Hi, my name is Sara. I'm a junior and my business is called Shop Suki. We're a jewelry business that creates handmade jewelry pieces, like necklaces and bracelets based off of designs that are either trending or things that we create ourselves.

Vicky Kang: I’m Victoria and-

Sarah Chow: I'm Sarah and we're both seniors. And we run the business of @flowersby.kc

Vicky Kang: And we basically sell corsages, boutonnieres, or any kind of flower arrangement that people need for school events such as Prom. And recently, we just did Sadie's. And yeah.

Sofia: So both of your businesses have products that kind of are marketed towards the teen market, obviously. So what was the inspiration behind creating the business?

Sara Hsu: I think for Shop Suki, we created it in like the midst of the pandemic, so I think it just sparked out of boredom. I think everyone can agree that we just fell into this routine of like waking up, online school, like back asleep and repeat. And so Shop Suki was just something new and exciting that we could try. And at first it like, wasn't necessarily to make money or to gain all this traction. It was just like a side hobby that was fun and exciting.

Vicky Kang: So basically, Sarah first told me like, if we were to have another way to make money, because we do both work, like part time jobs, why not sell and make corsages and boutonnieres? Because in the past, we did, like make our own boutonnieres for our dates for other school dances. And it was like, not that bad. And yeah, and then we started planning, like, very recently, like beginning of February.

Sofia: So obviously, you guys run the business together. You're both here. But do you guys have any other friends or family that helped you? Like how do you guys kind of split the rules of what you do at the business?

Sarah Chow: Um, we don't have any other friends or family that supports us. But we split the role by like, I would be driving everywhere to gather the supplies, and like we'll be making the corsages and boutonnieres at my house. So she would just come over and sleep over while making the corsages and boutonnieres the night before.

Sofia: What about you Sara?

Sara Hsu: Like in the beginning, my mom kind of helped out financially and like getting stuff, like structured. But then my sister would help in the creation process, like what designs we could do and actually making the necklaces. But since my sister's in college right now and I feel like Shop Suki is substantial, I’ve kind of been doing it on my own right now. So I take on a bigger responsibility of writing down the orders, making the necklaces and sending it out.

Sofia: And both of you guys have different methods of getting orders and basically getting them out. So why did you choose your specific method to sell your product and get orders through?

Sara Hsu: I think Etsy is just like catered for small businesses and so it's a lot more organized. So when somebody orders a product then Etsy, like, puts it on like an Excel or something and they send you like the statistics. But for Instagram, like we were thinking about selling on Instagram too, but we also wanted to reach a larger audience other than just Johns Creek since like jewelry, you can send it to different states and like flowers, it's kind of hard to. And so yeah, that's why we chose Etsy because it's a lot more structured.

Sofia: And for you guys?

Vicky Kang: Yeah for us, I mean, it's flowers, and we can only do so much with it. And we're actually planning to do it for other schools, but because maybe the distance is too long, or they don't have availability to kind of like, take care of the flowers even after we make it. So we thought that it'd be best if we did use Instagram as a social platform. One, because it's a good place for us to show our pictures and show our products and also at the same time they can easily message us. And we also use Google Forms for orders online because I think that's the fastest and most direct way we can get.

Sofia: So talking about, obviously, you guys have different materials that you use. So what is the process of buying materials and making sure that you gain profit and don't lose anything.

Vicky Kang: So this is our first time, like doing anything business related. And also because we are the ones making it, and we are the ones buying the materials, I think, we spent quite a bit, trying to plan, trying to make things affordable, and trying to make things work. So we practice a lot, we use different materials, we went out to different locations, like Michaels, Hobby Lobby, to find as much variety as we could to satisfy both the customers and us. Because financially, our income is just a part time job. So we also have to, like manage that in between.

Sara Hsu: Yeah, that's kind of the same for me, this was my first time, like starting a small business. And at first, like I said, we weren't really looking to make a profit, it was just like a side hobby for us. But then, when we decided, like people actually enjoy these necklaces, and maybe we can make some extra spending cash, we wanted to, like prioritize, I guess, quality over quantity. So we bought a lot of our beads from other small businesses on Etsy. And some of those beads could be pretty like, on the more expensive side, since people are like handcrafting it too. It's not just from like a big seller. So I think like the first time we broke even was like a surprise to us because we weren't like being calculated and we weren't really having this organized structure of “If we buy this amount of beads, then we have to sell this amount to gain that profit”. So it just kind of came naturally.

Sofia: Yeah, and this kind of stuff is hard to learn as a student in high school, but since this episode mainly revolves around you guys being business owners while also being in high school. How would you describe the balance between your business along with school, extracurriculars, and other things?

Sara Hsu: I think Shop Suki is very slow paced right now. Like we only get like maybe a couple orders a month. So balancing school and Shop Suki is doable. And I think it also helps that it doesn't feel like it's a chore. Making necklaces is really fun because you get to use your own creativity and it's like a really unique way of creative expression. So it never feels like a chore even when we have more orders than usual.

Sarah Chow: So when we're planning it was kind of hard to like, have our time not overlap because we have so many extracurricular activities like Vicky and I, but because like school dances are typically on Saturdays. So for Sadie's, for example, we'll meet up on Friday night, and just make everything that night, or like Saturday morning. So we can ensure the freshness of the flower. So it wasn't like that big of a hassle to balance with school since it's like a one day kind of thing.

Vicky Kang: But I do think like planning ahead of time, and spending our time to kind of calculate all these little details was also a big, big hunk of time that took a lot, you know.

Sofia: So based on this, what would you say was the biggest obstacle that you've had to overcome throughout the production of your business?

Sara Hsu: I think just being consistent. Like on TikTok, I always see people and like other businesses just blow up overnight because of one like trending video. And so I kind of thought like, Oh, if I post this TikTok, maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and like, we'll have so many followers and have so much traction, but I think it's really about like posting on your social media platforms, and having a specific time to post and I think I'm still like struggling with that because it gets a little bit tiring when you put in so much effort, but you don't necessarily see like direct outcomes of how much effort you put in. So yeah, I think just staying consistent is just a challenge for my business.

Vicky Kang: And with that consistency comes with forcing yourself to come out of our comfort zones. We’re very both introverted, like even texting is hard with friends, but like going out to reach out to people that I've never talked to in my life, and like kind of being like the fear of being like maybe judged by other peers, or kind of, just like the having, like other people's thoughts in mind is also kind of hard to like overcome. But I think it helped us a lot because we were able to reach out to a lot of people that we never thought we would have been able to.

Sofia: Do you feel like there are any advantages to being a high school business owner, like being able to sell to your friends, classmates, or maybe even teachers?

Sara Hsu: I think like what Vicky said, it's a bit intimidating when like, your whole community knows that you do a small business because you're like, Oh, what if they judge me? What if they think like, what I'm doing is stupid. But I think the biggest support that Shop Suki got was from Northview, like at the beginning, a lot of my friends, like most of our orders were from Northview students, and like combining my sister's friends and my friends, that's like a pretty large amount of orders, like just right from the beginning. So I think that support from your own community is really helpful.

Sofia: So what are the main things that you have learned about business, marketing, promotions, pricing, etc, as a high school student who owns a small business?

Vicky Kang: I don't know. It's like, we just recently started so like the title of like, owning a small business, it's very burdening, I guess, because we just started this as like, “Oh, I mean, we're seniors now like, high school is almost over, why not take advantage of like all these school dances”. So I think, through trial and error and a lot of money, we were able to kind of understand how, like such businesses work, because, like, for me, I am majoring in business. So I think this is a very good step for me into like, going through that path.

Sara Hsu: I think for me, like just taking on the responsibility of packaging, shipping, ordering and like having that inventory of what we need to have to create Shop Suki, it was a bit of a challenge. But it also taught me different aspects of business that I never even thought about. Because for me, I knew nothing about it. And I'm not planning on going into business. So I think Shop Suki was a really exciting step into discovering something new that I would have probably never have gone into.

Sofia: And like you guys are kind of saying about how it's like a side hobby and stuff like that. All of you guys are upperclassmen and so the future after high school is coming soon. Do you guys have any goals or plans for your business in the future? Are you going to grow it after high school or just keep it as a small business or just stop completely after you get out of high school.

Sara: I want to definitely keep Shop Suki as a side hobby, just like for extra spending cash. And also, like I said earlier, it's really helpful and like having a new way of expressing yourself in a different creative way. So definitely as a side hobby, and I don't want it to just like disappear after high school. So I'm probably going to continue in college.

Sofia: And I do know that obviously, you guys do little corsages. Because you guys ever be open to making bouquets or anything like opening a little floral shop? Maybe?

Vicky Kang: I think, because we don't have a license or certificate. We're not professionals. I think that's something for a later chapter in life, maybe where I can or Sarah can take like, floral classes, maybe that will be helpful. And if, if we are still eager to like, kind of prepare and assemble these like arrangements, then I think so. Yeah.

Sofia: Would you guys recommend other high school students to make businesses of their own? And do you guys have any tips for them if they want to start?

Sarah Chow: I would definitely recommend them but only if they have time, because it's really time consuming. It took out like a lot of like, our extra time that we can just use as our alone or like downtime to hang out with friends.

Vicky Kang: And it is also a commitment. It's like you need to prioritize this business so that other people can enjoy it as much as you do. But if there's something that you're really passionate about and something that you want to show other people what you're good at and give them like a taste of the passion that you have, then I recommend it as well. Because it is fun. It's fun.

Sara Hsu: I agree with you. I think if you're like wanting to start a small business, do it on something that you're actually passionate about and that you enjoy doing. I think a lot of people, they focus on the money part at first, and at the end, I think that's why a lot of businesses end up failing, but if it's something that you actually enjoy doing then the rest of your small business journey just comes naturally.

Sofia: Okay, thank you guys all for coming. Yeah, it was great talking to all of you guys. This concludes this episode of Point of View. Thank you so much for listening. For a transcript of this episode, head to the Point of View tab on our website, nhsmessenger.org and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @nhspointofview for updates and new episodes. I'm your host Sofia and this has been Point of View.