West L.A. toymaker Bizainy wants to help bring out the inner Lynda Resnick in today’s 7-year-olds.
The company is making three types of kits that help kids launch lemonade stands, babysitting services or charity bake sales. Each kit comes with a sales ledger, signs and a business planner that walks kids through budgeting, negotiating and other necessities of running a small business.
The kits, which went on sale last month, were the brainchild of Bizainy founder Carolyn Stone Enenstein, formerly a brand manager for the Walt Disney Co. and an operating partner at local private equity firm Corridor Capital, where her husband, Craig, is chief executive.
A mother of two, Enenstein said she couldn’t find the right toys to help teach her kids about money and entrepreneurship, so she set out creating some of her own.
“I wanted to present business and finance as fun,” she said. “These are skills kids need and I wanted kids to have a fun way to engage with them.”
The kits sell for $30 and are available on Bizainy’s site and Amazon.com as well as Brentwood retailer Star Toys. Enenstein said she’s talking to several other retailers and is hoping for wider distribution by summer – peak lemonade stand season.
Each kit contains a business planner that gives kids information on setting up, advertising and operating their business. The lemonade stand planner, for example, includes recipes; a budgeting worksheet to help add up the costs of lemons, sugar, and other material; and a step-by-step checklist for setting up the stand on sales day.
The kits might take some of the spontaneity out of these childhood endeavors – isn’t half the fun making your own signs? – and even some of the entrepreneurial spirit. But Enenstein said kids today might need more structure than they used to. What’s more, the kit might help force a family to make time for a lemonade sale.
“For families that are super busy, maybe they aspire to have a lemonade stand, but it’s hard to find time,” she said. “This creates the opportunity. It makes it a little easier.”
– James Rufus Koren
