A Green-Friendly Business Opportunity for Kids
Want your child to learn business skills and be “green friendly?
How do you safely and creatively teach kids about business? Ralph Williams, a father of two sons Patrick, 8, and Joe, 6, believes he has found the solution. When Williams’ son Patrick wanted to make more money in addition to his allowance, Williams shared a story of making beeswax candles as a boy and selling them in his family’s restaurant, offering them the idea of creating a candle-making business
Their first clients included family and friends and soon expanded to area businesses. Their product line has 
expanded to honey soap and other bee-related offerings. When they realized this was a fun and easy way to earn a little extra spending money, the brothers wanted to share this opportunity with children around the country, giving Williams the idea to create FranChild and the “My Kids First Biz” experience. Now they work with families from coast to coast and even internationally.
FranChild is a company that makes ‘franchise-like’ businesses available for children to operate. Like a franchise, kids and parents get marketing support, including an online community for the benefit of members called ‘the hive.” The cost to start-up a FranChild business is $25 for a standard annual membership which includes a FranChild Company Certificate acknowledging the child’s business launch; ready-to-print business cards from FranChild business templates; how-to instructions and ideas for marketing and selling products; access to the My Kids First Biz Resource Center, a $75,000 marketing system for creating customized packaging products; below wholesale pricing on materials; and access to the “hive” to share ideas with the FranChild Business community. A Web site is available for young entrepreneurs for an additional $2 per month.
There are four FranChild product categories that carry the bee theme: beeswax candles, organic soap, apparel and jewelry. All natural in the materials they are made of, each FranChild line is “green-friendly”. In most cases, FranChild offers ‘below wholesale’ pricing, so kids can experience wholesale and retail sales of their chosen product line.
FranChild Candle Company – Children have the opportunity to make and sell candles made of 100% beeswax. Included in the candle start-up kit are 50 sheets of natural colored beeswax, 36 feet of wick and instructions for making candles. Additional colors are available seasonally and voted upon by the “hive” as to which ones are brought to the market.
FranChild Soap Company™ – Hand-made organic soap is available in a variety of refreshing scents including citrus, honey and peppermint. Kids are able to make their own custom labels, including private labels for businesses to sell their own brand of organic soap.
FranChild Apparel Company™ – Two collections of organic cotton t-shirts made in America by Stinger ApparelTM feature the FranChild logo and BEEmotionsTM featuring bee-themed expressions such as “Bee Happy” and other seasonally themed sayings.
FranChild Jewelry Company™ – The Royal Jelli Jewels™ line includes rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces. The themes include butterflies, dolphins, flowers, hearts and starfish. More designs will be added as the community of FranChild Jewelry votes and decides which item to bring to the marketplace next, including of course, a bee. Jewels come finished and are purchased in quantities of six of the same type and style in assorted colors.
In addition to learning the basics of business, young entrepreneurs can experience concepts like manufacturing (candles), marketing, packaging, branding, private labeling, sales and money management. FranChild allows kids to set their own pricing giving them the control to set the profit margin. In turn, they learn about spending money, earning money and hopefully saving money.
FranChild, LLC is an online community of parents and children sharing a fun project with an applicable and valuable life lesson, learning the basics of business. For more information on the company or to launch a FranChild business with your child, visit www.FranChild.com.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
What a great idea. I had never heard of that company.
It is nice to know that there are options out there for our children. Options that give us the opportunity to teach our children about money.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I wonder if this could be a good school fundraiser!
August 8th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Great question – I’ll look into it for you, Sarah.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
FranChild can be a wonderful fundraiser, led by a kidpreneur from a particular school. A band member, for example, who owns a FranChild Soap Biz, could create custom labels on soap with his/her school name and band trip, that the whole organization could sell.
My own kids have used the t-shirt line as a fund raiser for their school, and they also made a little bit. In this case they were using their business for a greater good, so margin was not as important. Still – keeping $.50 on a few hundred shirts for themselves added up – while letting the school keep a majority of profit!
Another “in” would be to sell products to your school bookstore, where FranChild kids make money selling wholesale – and the school store makes profit on the retail sales.
The key is that a Franchild Business Owner – likely a student at that school – becomes the fundraising company helping the school.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I love the idea of custom labels on soap!
August 8th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
It’s fun! A girl in Florida – took a picture of herself in funky sunglasses, uploaded that image, and created the brand “Rockstar Organic.” Prior to that – it was a more conservative picture – and she marketed “Syndey’s All Natural – Citrus Soap.” Kids can private label using stock images, their own, or a company’s logo.