It all started when Brook Bignell was 9 years old.
Brook, now 11, joined her mother, Joan Bignell, in her fudge-making endeavor — Joanie's Home Fudge & Sweets — fulfilling her own desire to learn about running a business.
"I needed someone to help me with my business and it was a way I could spend time with Brook," said Joan Bignell, 50, of Plymouth. "Slowly it's getting built and it's for the future. Something Brooke can do."
The young entrepreneur's perspective of how she got involved is a little different — her mother was paying her and she wanted a Maltese dog.
"It's a lot of hard work," Brook said about spending some Friday nights and early Saturday mornings helping her mother.
Mother and daughter begin stirring and mixing or adding the finishing touches to their sweet treats at 6 a.m. Saturday mornings in preparation for the Elkhart Lake Farmers Market during the summer and the Factory Street Flea Market in Plymouth during the winter.
Brook's main duties include stirring the fudge until it gets too hot and bubbly for her to handle, covering and labeling the plastic containers of fudge, shaking the containers to make sure the fudge levels and sometimes decorating the packages.
Not only does Brook help her mother with her sweets, but she created a limited-time special line of brownies called "Brownies for Puppy" about two years ago.
"It started basically I'd make brownies and I'd throw in some chips and … love," Brook said with a giggle. "Mostly when I made them, I had to get up really early in the morning."
At the markets, Brook serves as sales person alongside her mother and David Wisniewski, who they often share a booth with. Brook also helps Wisniewski sell his artisan sourdough bread.
"She has her own (sales) pitch," said Wisniewski, 61, of the Town of Mitchell. "First of all she smiles and talks to people and gets them to stop."
Lynn Vollrath met Brook at the farmers market more than a year ago and said she is very mature for her age and handles herself very well. Vollrath, 45, of Sheboygan Falls, sells jewelry at the market.
"She's like a mature person in a little person's body," Vollrath said. "She's just very comfortable selling her fudge and things."
For two years, Brook sold her dollar brownies until she had raised approximately $700 for her Maltese puppy, Cocoa, which she bought in December.
While she was selling brownies on the weekend, she also came up with other ways to make money. Inspired by her longing for a dog, she began to knit dog collars, bracelets and necklaces and sold them at Parkview Elementary School where she is a fifth-grader.
"Yeah, I tried that until the principal found out," she said. She was told she couldn't sell anything on school property unless 50 percent of the proceeds went to the schools and that didn't bode well for her puppy fund, so she stuck to her original plan.
Now that she has purchased her dog, Brook has moved on to other projects.
She recently began selling her line of rainbow-sprinkled, chocolate-covered mini-pretzels for $1 per 2-ounce bag. She's also working on different shaped balloon animals, which she hopes to begin selling in the summer.
"My friends have tried these (pretzels) and if I bring them to school, they'll go crazy," Brook said. "They think it's really cool. I think it's major because a lot of my friends don't do this."
As with all of her creations, Brook has to assess on her own how much the supplies cost to make her items, jots them down in a notebook and then she comes up with a price. Figuring out the profit margin is all a lesson in business she hopes to use in the future, because ultimately Brook would like to be a fashion designer.
She plans to open her own boutique and provide a little corner for her mother to sell her fudge, Brook said. She's currently working on some sketches for possible apron designs for her mother's fudge business.
When it comes to business, Brook said she's learned enough to know she has to "keep trying" and she wants all kids her age to understand that, too.
"Because if you don't have the encouragement that you need, you can always get your friends to help you," Brook said. "You should always follow your heart because it always knows right."
Seven Short Leadership Lessons for Anyone Who Runs a Family Business
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Magnolia
NewsVine
Furl
Google
Yahoo