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Accordion Squeeze Bottles With Tube Home Depot
(FORTUNE Baby Business) Lawrence, Kan. -- Aback Tony and Terri Schwager abstruse that their aboriginal child, Anthony, was developmentally delayed and had epilepsy, they abashed themselves sick.
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"We couldn't advice but think, 'What is activity to appear to Anthony aback we move on?' " says Terri. "He is actual sweet, gentle, and quiet. We were abashed that addition ability booty advantage of him."
By the time Anthony's parents abstruse of his condition, a aftereffect of low oxygen during birth, he was 1. Aback they apparent it, they looked for resources. They enrolled Anthony in a special-education affairs and assassin caretakers to supplement their efforts.
Tony, again a administrator at Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500), went aback to academy to added his career. The brace eventually had three added accouchement and acclimatized into their routines, beholden for their close family. Tony landed a job as a abecedary at a bounded aerial school; Terri becoming a nursing amount and additionally started working.
"A kid with a affliction ... aback it happens, you apprehend it is not the end of the world," says Tony. Still, they abashed about the future. How would they booty affliction of Anthony afterwards they retired?
But then, to their surprise, Anthony himself begin the answer.
Excited by a video he saw in third grade, Anthony begged his parents to add bees to the baby acreage they kept on the ancillary for fun. Afterwards a year they relented and eventually set up bright artificial tubes to abode the hives in his bedroom. He was obsessed, not alone with bees but with the honey. He harvested so abundant of the being that three years after he and his parents absitively to try affairs it at the farmers' bazaar downtown.
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They started small, announcement seven artificial clasp bottles on a foot-square table. "Everything fit into my two-door Honda Civic," says Aaron KimLuellen, a caretaker. Nine years after they're still in business, and alteration their account - which includes affair lip balm, lotion, candles, and added honey articles - now requires Tony's auto barter and a tow trailer.
A big acumen for their success is Anthony, now 21. He does algebraic like a fourth-grader and reads at a aerial academy level, but aback he's manning the stall, apparent with a airy ANTHONY'S BEEHIVE sign, barter respond. With a above demeanor, he approaches passersby as if he were administration account with friends.
"This honey is local, and there's no preservatives," he'll explain in his affable way, absolution them sample all the merchandise.
He additionally offers chargeless candlemaking acquaint for children, who watch enthralled, acquisitive to blanket their fingers about the balmy affair and cycle it into a cylinder, aloof as Anthony, clearing bottomward to their height, is assuming them. With Anthony, there's no adamantine sell; already fatigued in, his barter become fans.
"Your raspberry lip analgesic is the best!" a woman at the bazaar says to him one afternoon backward aftermost summer. Soon addition chump walks abroad with four ample bottles of honey-lime-coconut lotion.
"It's fun to see how the business has evolved," says Carol Hampton, who has been arcade at Anthony's Beehive back the aboriginal days. She uses the cast not because she has accomplished three of the Schwager accouchement in school, but because she cast the assortment of the offerings. "They're consistently aggravating to accomplish it beginning and interesting."
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Anthony's Beehive's advance access started early. Afterwards aloof a brace of years of affairs honey, the Schwagers began to see the business as an befalling for Anthony to abutment himself with a little advice from the family. But how could he abound the business and accretion a attendance above the farmers' market?
The acknowledgment emerged aback the Schwagers apparent an entrepreneurship advance - sponsored by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and the Youth Entrepreneurs of Kansas - at a bounded aerial school. Anthony's ancestor active him up, assertive the advance would accommodate Anthony with the sales and business abilities all-important to advance the business aback his parents can no best work.
With his father's advice and his own adulation for artefact development, Anthony captivated his own adjoin his classmates. His business plan - which approved how abacus a honey-and-beeswax lip analgesic to the band would aggrandize profits - won top award-winning for best display. (Unlike his competitors, he set up a alive arrest that offered the lip balms for sale.) He additionally fabricated the account of NFTE's best entrepreneurs of 2005.
Today the $1.50 lip balms appear in 20 flavors (thanks to Anthony's agog experimentation) and are amid the company's best assisting items. They additionally becoming Anthony's Beehive admired shelf amplitude at retailers, including the Walgreens (WAG, Fortune 500) in town, which showcases bounded products. Mike Matt, the commune manager, who says he cast the flavors and the "uniqueness" of the brand, put the artefact abreast the advanced of the store.
The adorableness band afflicted added retailers as well. "I like the quality," says Diana Endicott, architect of the Good Natured Ancestors Farms Alliance and a accomplice with the Hen Abode Markets in the Kansas City area. "They are consistently award a new artefact and addition out how to accomplish it better. They are absolutely entrepreneurs."
The account for flavors, says Anthony, "just appear to me." He's consistently aggravating capacity in the honey straws and lip balms. Some don't assignment - affection candy, chocolate, and bake-apple bite backward on the shelf - but abounding do, including blueberry muffin and lemonade. He introduces about bisected a dozen new flavors a season, and they accumulate barter interested.
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It's this arrangement of choices at low prices, says Tony, that will advice the ancestors business attempt with Burt's Bees, the best apparent bee-inspired cast in the country.
These canicule Anthony's Beehive articles ample a table eight anxiety long, as able-bodied as a tent, and accept garnered an online afterward at anthonysbeehive.com. Aback a $3,500 honey-straw-filling apparatus accepted too difficult to manipulate, Tony invented a simpler archetypal - the Goldrush 500 - and awash 25 of the $600 machines online aftermost year. The accoutrement bent the eye of a above government official in Malawi, who bought it to activate business in his locale. (The Schwagers accept back developed a added able foot-operated version, which sells for $900.) Total sales of all of Anthony's Beehive products, from the market, online, and retail, accept doubled, extensive $65,000 in 2007. It has been assisting back 2002.
Last year Tony abdicate his teaching job to focus on the aggregation full-time. Anthony's sister, Mariah, 15, and brothers Brandon, 19, and Adam, 17, accomplish $15 an hour allowance out. Anthony earns 10% of the farmers' bazaar profits and is acquisitive to see the aggregation grow.
"I appetite to be in added stores," he says.
In May he will alum from C-Tran, a alteration affairs that teaches disabled adults abilities (such as affable and cleaning) all-important to alive independently. Aback that happens, the Schwagers achievement to absorb him in sales calls and accord him added responsibility. They additionally achievement that a affinity will eventually run the company, and that the business will be acknowledged abundant to defended their children's futures, abnormally Anthony's.
"It is a amusement that has gone out of control," explains Tony. And he acknowledgment his advantageous stars for that.
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First Published: March 5, 2008: 12:16 PM EST
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