Spending your evenings and weekends working might be typical behaviour for a 17-year-old trying to save money to travel or for university.
Andrew French works a little harder than most teenagers, but he says he’s created a more enjoyable and lucrative job for himself by starting Quarry Clothing.
The company prints t-shirts and other items with school or event logos and employs 30 other teens in high schools across North Vancouver, West Vancouver and Vancouver as commissioned salespeople.
“I’m very proud and happy at what he has done so far,” said Alex Jacobs-Hajian, a consultant at Accenture and an Ivey Business School alumni who has mentored French.
“This might not be the next Facebook you’d sell for X-million dollars. but it will give Andrew all the tangible experiences that any employer would like to see, in a very low-risk environment.”
French, who lives in North Vancouver but attends Mulgrave School in West Vancouver, said he was inspired to start Quarry after participating in a business case competition for high school students run by Western University’s Ivey Business School. French estimates he spends between 15 and 25 hours a week working on the business in addition to his Grade 12 courses and homework, but he says it’s better than his previous job at a store.
“I worked in a minimum-wage job, and no teenager really wants to do that,” he said. “It was something I wanted to get out of and experience this.”
Inspired by companies like Toms Shoes and Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), French has committed to donate or invest a quarter of his company’s profits to help other young people start businesses. The youth-driven aspect of the business has also helped him to make agreements with Nike (NYSE:NKE), Oakley and New Balance to carry their products.
“I thought of who can we benefit and who can we help,” French said. “The best person i could think of to help was me three months before [starting the business].”
Jacobs-Hajian said it’s still relatively rare for someone as young as French to start a business, but he believes that French’s generation is more proactive when it comes to preparing for the future.
He noted that while French attends a West Vancouver private school, his parents have modest jobs: his mother works part-time in an administrative job at Capilano University; his father is a sales associate for a drywall company.
“Some people argue that [millennials] are an uptight, entitled generation,” Jacobs-Hajian said. “Some people using the same evidence to argue that this is a generation that set the bar high. They want to be in charge of their work or their life and their destiny, and I tend to [agree] with the second category.”
The Next Big Thing, sponsored by Vancouver technology company Hootsuite, caters to the new generation of entrepreneurs. The program is open to 17- to 22-year-olds who have a plan for a startup.
Jacobs-Hajian gave French advice while he was starting up the business, and laid out different scenarios involving high-risk or low-risk businesses. French’s business is relatively low-risk and didn’t involve a big outlay of capital to get started.
The experience will give French an edge in the job market because he’ll already know basic skills such as networking and how to pitch an idea, Jacobs-Hajian said.
He also encouraged French to ask himself what the company’s goal was.
“If it’s about helping other people, maybe you don’t need high revenue, but you can get other people to come and work with you and it’s more joyful ... which I think ultimately he decided.”
@jenstden
