Camp Startup Lets Girls Pitch Concepts, Not Tents

By SUSAN CARPENTER

July 11, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DANVILLE, Calif. — It was business unusual as the five young women from Future Image, a toy-manufacturing start-up, practiced how to present their business plan to potential investors. Barefoot, with metallic stars stuck to her temples, marketing manager Alexa Lundahl did cartwheels while Daniella Klopocki performed pirouettes and Franchesca Hladik sang.

If not entirely professional, at least their behavior was understandable. They are, after all, only 13 years old.

The members of Future Image were the youngest of about 30 teenage girls from all over the country who came to Camp Startup, a two-week immersion program held in the Bay Area in late June, to learn how to launch a business--or to grow the ones they already have.

“Entrepreneurship is a real career path for a lot of women,” said Barbara Dowd, director of camp programs for Independent Means, a Santa-Barbara based company that teaches teenage girls how to make, save and invest money through conferences, camps, books, videotapes and games.

“When the work force is radically changing . . . feeling confident to create your own work or business as a free agent is becoming more and more important,” Dowd said.

There are more than 8 million U.S. businesses owned by women, according to a 1997 National Foundation of Women Business Owners survey. Women are the fastest-growing segment of new business owners, and their average age is getting younger.

Leah Sawyer, a 15-year-old from Medford, Ore., was one of five attendees who already runs her own business, Sawyer Sweets. She heard of Camp Startup through a teacher and convinced her parents to pay the $1,600 tuition so she could learn how to expand.

“I never would have been taught this in school. Maybe in college, but it’s something I needed now,” said Sawyer, who started her business at age 11 after making chocolate suckers and caramels for a friend’s birthday party.

Today, she sells them at fairs, bazaars and local cafes, but her ultimate goal is “to be up there with See’s Candies and Godiva to prove to people that my candy always was and still is as good.”

It’s a big dream--but it was typical of those of many campers.

“When I’m older, I want to own a salon. It’s my passion,” said Lundahl, a 13-year-old from Thousand Oaks who often does her friends’ hair.

Although she has limited work experience, she already knows she wants to run her own business so “I can make my own rules, have it how I want to have it,” said Lundahl, who plans to get her bachelor’s degree in business management, then attend beauty school. “I’m kind of bossy. I don’t think it would be good if I worked for somebody else.”

Camp Startup, now in its seventh year, “is a convenient structure to introduce all the major elements of business and give [young women] a way that they can tap into their own interests and creativity in coming up with a business that hopefully they could imagine themselves opening,” Dowd said.

A spokesman for the American Camping Assn., the organization that accredits U.S. camps, said the camp’s focus is unusual and, to his knowledge, it is not part of a trend toward business-preparation camps for teens.

“Young girls need to . . . understand it’s not a choice between doing what you love and making a living. You can do both,” Dowd said.

That spirit of creativity and entrepreneurship was evident throughout the camp and its curriculum. Soon after arriving at the Athenian School, a small private school in the area where the camp is held, each girl was given a business card with her name, address and phone number. An early class on how to prepare a business plan centered on a brownie-making business. And field trips to local female-owned and -operated companies, such as San Francisco-based Respect (which makes “PMS” nail polish and henna tattoos), brought them into contact with other young female entrepreneurs who had followed their hearts and found their careers.

Grouped with campers of the same age for skill and interest compatibility, the girls formed five teams to develop a product or service concept. Many of the ideas centered around things teenage girls already are interested in, such as fashion. One group considered manufacturing recycled-clothing handbags. Another considered opening a frozen yogurt museum and calling it Yo History. (They discarded the idea in favor of opening a frozen yogurt shop and art gallery called the Ice Box.)

Lucy Garcia, a 17-year-old, was in charge of marketing for the group and designed the Ice Box logo. She won a scholarship to the camp through a school raffle and, before coming to the camp, had no interest in business or any real knowledge about it. She had thought she would become a probation officer or social worker.

“Now that I see I could do it, maybe it is better to open my own business,” said Garcia, who now is considering establishing her own rehabilitation center one day.

In addition to learning how to prepare business plans, the campers attended classes on personal finance, investing, leadership, communication skills, diversity, negotiation techniques and stress reduction--subjects that are not taught in most schools.

“Being able to show initiative, to plan and carry through a project, to communicate effectively, to be able to work as a team--the skills involved in being an entrepreneur are . . . what we want to build and reinforce in young people going into the work force, whether they work for themselves or someone else,” Dowd explained.

For the members of Future Image, that opportunity may be just around the corner. While most of the campers’ business plans were developed as a tool for understanding the process, the 13-year-olds’ concept--a computer game called Business Girl in a Briefcase--may have legs. The camp’s organizer, Independent Means, is interested in buying the idea of an interactive CD-ROM that teaches preteen girls how to start and run their own companies.

“It would be really, really cool if it took off,” said Lundahl, who came up with the name. “We’re going to be millionaires.”

Susan Carpenter can be reached at [email protected].