Business plan

Me eldest developed his first business plan this past week, an inclination that we can almost certainly trace back to his mother’s genetics rather than mine.

He and I had been working through a project where students are supposed to choose a toy and research how it’s made.  They are asked to draw a scale plan of the factory or production facility required to build the toy and then to build a scale model of the factory.  The goal is to work on concepts of measurement, scale, mapping, engineering and so forth.

Ethan, however, got hung up at the first stage.  “Why just pretend to make a toy, Dad?  Why can’t we really make a toy?  Then we could sell it and get money.”  There was some talk about realistic business models at that point, but he persisted, and we eventually agreed that he could make papercraft toys.  He would get a few papercraft figures printed on cardstock and sell them either as sheets or as assembled toys.  We did a cost / income analysis, and we figured that he needed angel investors to come up with about $40 of start-up capital.

On Tuesday night he pitched to Mom and to Grandma Kathy.  On Wednesday night he pitched to Grandpa Art.

This week we go into production.