Growing up, siblings Caroline and Jake Danehy spent a large portion of their summer vacations ferrying between their home in New York City and Fire Island’s car-free Fair Harbor beach. In the process, both began noticing an increasing amount of plastic water bottles stuck floating in the water. In 2014, the sibling team decided to take action to help this problem. Jake was a junior attending Colgate University and entered the college’s mock Shark Tank pitch competition for emerging companies. He pitched Fair Harbor, a men’s swimwear company that makes suits from recycled plastic water bottles. He won the company, earning $20,000 along with mentors in judges Jennifer Hyman, Jessica Alba, MC Hammer and Neil Blumenthal. With his sister Caroline, then a high school senior at Manhattan’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School, he laid the groundwork for the business.

Unfortunately, Caroline and Jake ran into various issues regarding the recycled plastic they wanted to use. Manufacturers quoted recycled plastics-to-swimsuit fabric at about $12 per yard, which was more than they could afford. Jake later explained in an interview that “no one was really doing this in 2014,”. However, utilizing the pitch competition prize money, they were able to make a down payment and soon produce Fair Harbor’s first swimsuit in China.

In 2018, the Danehys settled into a New York City office. They were hoping to win a share of the $21 billion swimsuit market by focusing on e-commerce and traditional advertising. Six years later, that strategy has paid off. Fair Harbor has attracted about 300,000 customers. Radio shows such as the Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM have been hugely effective to their sales. They also sent more than two million catalogues to prospective customers in 2021 and had the Fair Harbor logo’s positioning behind home plate in Yankee Stadium. These were all very helpful to brand growth, as the brand surpassed 2020 revenue within the second quarter of 2021. In the first five months of 2021, Fair Harbor had already generated $23 million.

Both the swimwear and sustainable fashion categories have been growing at a steady clip, with the global swimwear market expected to increase 38% to $29 billion by 2025 as people increase spending on vacations and beach time, according to Statista. Sustainable fashion is also expected to grow 50% to $9 billion by 2025. Sitting between both of these industries, Fair Harbor has the market on its side and continues to grow each day.

Carson Grill was just 15 years old when he went on Shark Tank with his father for his very own product, the Touch Up Cup. He had just started his freshman year of high school, but unlike most of his classmates, he was already running his own company. The Touch Up Cup is a patented plastic cup that holds 13 oz. of paint. It has stainless steel springs that mix paint and remove clumps when the cup is shaken. Carson first came up with the idea while working with his dad around the house. The two of them noticed that the paint and paint buckets his family kept around for home touch-ups became rusty, old, and unusable over time. The sharks were very impressed with Carson as he led the pitch and answered all of the questions with detailed and advanced vocabulary and business terminology. His knowledge and involvement in the brand definitely helped gained the sharks’ attention. He ended up landing a deal with guest shark and founder of Toms, Blake Mycoskie, for %150,000 in exchange for 17.5% of the company. 

Since landing the deal on Shark Tank, the Touch Up Cup gained a lot of attention and success due to the publicity from the show. YouTube clips and short Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok videos of Carson pitching on the show received millions of views, helping to further advertise the company for free. According to the most recent update, the business did $1 million in sales in 2021 and was projected to do over $3 million in 2022. The company also expanded its product line and made advantageous deals with nationwide retailers like Walmart and Lowe’s. Currently, the Touch Up Cup is available at Lowe’s, Meijer, Walmart, and Theisen’s. They offer nine different products on the brand’s website, such as tarp, brush set, brush cleaner, and more. Instead of just selling Touch Up Cups, they’ve begun selling products to aid in the entire painting process. It has also expanded to sell online via Amazon rather than just through its own website, which will likely help to increase brand awareness.

At 5 years old, Mia Monzidelis’s dad took her to a horseback riding lesson. Shortly after, Mia became a horse enthusiast. She was always wanting to own and ride a horse, yet this was not a possibility with where Mia and her parents lived. This inspired her to create something that was like a real horse that you could ride anywhere, anytime. So, Mia invented Power Pony.

Power Pony is powered by the patent pending ZüME engine. It is iOS connected, fully interactive, and guaranteed to provide fun, smiles, and laughter on many exciting riding adventures. The Power Pony riding experience is fully customizable when paired with the ZüME iOS App. Three pre-set speeds allow you to quickly set and change your Power Pony’s speed and sensitivity: trot, gallop or race. The Power Pony is imagined “by kids for kids”. Mia went through several versions of the name and samples of the toy before reaching the final product. Mia explained how it took many failures to get it right, but each failure taught her something new.

Mia’s proudest moment was when she was asked to be on the Kelly Clarkson show with Joy Mangano, a very successful inventor and entrepreneur. Joy and Mia were able to build a relationship and Joy is a great mentor and role model for Mia as a young entrepreneur.

Moving forward, Mia and her team are in the process of bringing some additional horses and unicorn options to their “stables”. They are also pursuing various other animals. Power Pony has many more ideas for the ZüME product, and they are looking forward to sharing all of those with their audience and customers soon. Mia continues to work hard assisting with designs, testing samples, providing feedback, helping with marketing, video shoots, being the spokesperson, and much more. She said the most important lesson she’s learned throughout the development of Power Pony is to “never underestimate a kid”.

At just nine years old, Zandra Cunningham was a self-proclaimed “classic girly-girl” and was constantly asking her parents for various makeup and face products. After receiving the answer “no” on multiple occasions, Zandra had the idea to simply make her own beauty products. By the time Zandra turned ten, her handmade makeup and skincare business, Zandra Beauty, had launched.

Zandra went through much “trial and error” when first crafting her products. She played around with different ingredients until she discovered how to make the right formulas she wanted. Zandra first sold her products at local farmers markets until she started an Etsy shop at age twelve. Her brand stood out as it was one of the only affordable beauty brands with organic, vegan, and plant-based ingredients. Zandra Beauty now has its own website, and is also sold at Walmart, Costco, Whole Foods Market, and more. There is also something very unique and purposeful about the packaging of Zandra’s products, as it is full of inspiring words and affirmations and incorporates a playful, bright color scheme. Zandra even explained her goal in educating women through her packaging, stating, “I want my packaging to help girls navigate what each term means, and how to read and check ingredients.”

Zandra is now twenty-one years old and has grown up alongside her business over the years. While the brand has grown and evolved greatly, Zandra says her goals have remained the same: “Our main focus is to push out amazing products that are safe for everyone and the earth, but also to make sure that we’re building a relationship with our customers.” In the coming years, Zandra hopes to break ground on a new facility, which will act as the brand’s headquarters. She also wants to start experimenting with selling additional, more sophisticated skincare, such as facial serums and oils. Zandra’s advice for young entrepreneurs is to embrace what you know and celebrate small wins. She also emphasizes the importance of finding your people, who will help you succeed and lead you to new ideas and opportunities.

Mikaila Ulmer is the successful young entrepreneur who founded her own lemonade company, Me and the Bees Lemonade. The business started when Mikaila was just 4 years old and got stung by a bee twice in one week. At first, Mikaila feared the bees, but she soon became fascinated by them after learning about all their hard work and what they do for humans and our ecosystem. Around the same time, Mikaila’s family was encouraging her to enter various children’s business competitions. Mikaila began thinking, and decided she wanted to make a version of her Great Granny Helen’s lemonade recipe that would help honeybees by using their honey in the recipe rather than just sugar.

Me and the Bees Lemonade has ended up growing for more than ten years, and with each sale Mikaila donates a percentage of the profits to local and international organizations fighting to save the honeybees. This is where Mikaila’s saying, “Buy a Bottle, Save a Bee”, comes from. Today, Me and the Bees Lemonade comes in five different delicious flavors and is being sold at Whole Foods Market, The Fresh Market, World Market, and H-E-B stores across Texas and Kroger stores in Houston. It is also available at a growing number of restaurants, food trailers and natural food delivery companies.

Mikaila now spends much of her time traveling for speaking events to share her stories and experiences being a young social entrepreneur. She even leads workshops and entrepreneurship panels, advocating for her business and for the Healthy Hive Foundation, a nonprofit to further help the mission of saving the honeybees. Mikaila has Facebook and Instagram pages that display interesting facts about bees and her business for former and potential customers to follow along with. Today, Mikaila Ulmer is 19 and has recently released her first book, “Bee Fearless, Dream like a Kid” in August of 2020 about her adventures in being a social entrepreneur and selling all-natural lemonades in a way that helps save the bees.

I think Mikaila is a great example of how entrepreneurs can take a product that already exists on the market and make it unique and different in a way that stands out and appeals to consumers. It’s a great way to get ideas flowing and establish a new way of thinking for entrepreneurs, and so I found her story especially fascinating and inspiring.