Budding Entrepreneur
Because entrepreneurship can start at any age
Entrepreneurship can start at any age.
Eleven-year-old entrepreneur and innovator Breanna Starr Price started her own business Starrbaby Soaps – coined after her nickname – just a year ago and has grown since then with her business and her goals.
Breanna, who has been home-schooled since the fifth grade, lives in the rural area of Delco with her parents, Crystal and Billy Price, and her two younger brothers, Dakotah and Skylar.
Having a business, especially at this age, wasn’t something Breanna imagined would happen. Her idea of soap making actually came about as a necessity rather than an entrepreneurial idea.
“I have a lot of allergies, and soap makes my hands break out, so I wanted to make a soap that wouldn’t make my skin itch,” Breanna says.
Breanna started concocting different things together until she found the right ingredients: oatmeal and oil mixed with a goat’s milk base. She began brewing her homemade soap in a backyard shed, but once it became too cold to work outside, she moved her work to the kitchen.
“I wasn’t going to sell it at first, it was just a thing I wanted to do at home,” Breanna says.
But just like all grandmothers, Breanna’s was proud of her and wanted to talk about her creative granddaughter. Breanna’s grandmother is a hairstylist, and she told her customers about her innovative granddaughter and her all-natural soaps. Within a short period of time, people were calling for orders.
“I didn’t think I would have my own business, but I really like that it turned into one,” says Breanna, who now makes and sells more than sixty-seven different types of soaps. “It gives me something to do, and it’s helped me become patient and learn math a little better, too.”
She went with her family to a health expo last year in Wilmington and ran a booth to sell the soaps there.
Breanna’s soap in different scents comes wrapped in paper with hand-tied bows. She has added several organic options beyond soaps including bath bags, candles, and relaxing scents.
Beside her flower garden at home, Breanna has a patch where she grows all of the herbs for her products.
“I’m trying to make laundry detergent,” she says. “It’s working, but I’m not sure about selling it yet.”
Her latest financial goal was born out of a family trip to the Outer Banks.
“That’s what I’ve been saving up for – I want a horse from the Outer Banks,” says Breanna, who loves animals and has hopes of graduating early so she can go to North Carolina State University and become a veterinarian.
Her ultimate dream is to move to Texas and join the SPCA. As for her soap business, it’s possible she could have her own storefront at some point in the future, but not quite yet.
“I like to do as much as I can,” Breanna says, with a toothy grin. “So maybe I will have a store one day, but I want to be a vet first.”
To view more of photographer Susan Francy’s work, go to www.susanfrancyphotographs.com.
