Hi! My name is Emily and I am a ten year old, 5th grader at Marian McKeown Elementary School. When I was thinking of an idea for TREP$ I was really into duct tape and I thought I could make duct tape bows or wallets to sell. But, then I thought they would be a common product that everyone already had. Next, I thought about making keychains with Rexlace, but I didn’t have a lot of the supplies I would need, and I thought they would be too expensive to make.
So one day I decided to go on Pinterest for an idea. I found these really cool looking necklaces made out of washers and scrapbook paper, and that was what I decided to do! We took a trip to Lowes and got a few washers to make some sample necklaces to see how they would turn out. They were fun and easy to make! My dad helped me find the most inexpensive washers from EBay and we bought them in bulk. Then, my mom and I made a few trips to AC Moore with our coupons to get all the other supplies we needed.
I started wearing my sample necklaces to school, and my friends all wanted one. Some of the designs that were on the necklaces were flowers, stripes, music notes, and even dog bones! I made 118 necklaces in total. Next, I started to think about my display. How was I going to set up my table to make customers want to stop and buy from me? I knew I didn’t want to spend any money on my display because that would take away from my profits. So back to Pinterest I went looking for display ideas!
My project name was called Funky Junk, so I thought it would be fun to get “junk” to display my necklaces for the marketplace. I am lucky to have an uncle who lives on a farm and keeps everything! He helped me find some old rakes, a tire, a wooden ladder, and we even made a display out of old chicken wire. Some customers told me they came by my table because of my display was very unique and eye-catching.
The night of the Market place my product was hot! I couldn’t even get all of the necklaces displayed before people were buying them. A lot of my teachers and classmates bought from me. I got free advertising because people bought them and started wearing them right away. I sold almost all of them and even had additional sales after the marketplace was over. Altogether, after my expenses I made about $220. The TREP$ Marketplace was a lot of fun and hard work and I can’t wait to do it next year.
