A new business owner open for only a few months wouldn’t even dream of breaking even, let alone making a profit in such a short amount of time.
But the owners of 2 Little Mask Makers in Mundelein have already earned enough profits to donate money to a food bank and to purchase backpacks for a local school.
Jaina Bartusch, 10, and her sister, Olivia, 11, use their mom’s crafting machine to decorate and sell fabric protective masks with special iron-on designs.
Their aunt encouraged them to start the business after they made a mask for her with a pink sparkly heart and her initial.
They started advertising on social media with a few designs.
“But then, it grew bigger,” Jaina said. “People started asking for quotes. They told us the pictures they wanted. People asked for ballerinas, sayings, flowers, a 20-sided die.” They had never heard of a 20-sided die, but fulfilled the customer’s request.
“It’s pretty easy to find the images online,” Olivia said. They transfer the images to a machine that cuts out the image in a vinyl that can be ironed on the mask. They purchase masks in a variety of colors and sizes at a local store at $2 each. It costs another $1 for create the mask. They sell them at $5 each, giving them a $2 profit per mask. So far they’ve made 378 masks.
“The business is going really well,” Jaina said. “You can’t really find masks with certain images, or people don’t have the tools to make them. If somebody wants their initial on their mask, we can make an initial on the mask. We can do fun designs.”
Their father Jeremy said requests have come from as far away as Florida and California.
He and his wife, Amy, help make the masks, especially now that the girls are back doing schoolwork from home. They tell new customers that the girls have school now so can’t make as many as they did in the summer. He said some of their friends are asking if they can help.
Olivia said the most difficult part of the business is dealing with the customers. “They want something really specific, or we might not have the color masks they want, or the image they want. It can be a little tricky to get them to change their minds,” she said.
But she can persuade them with her personal experience. She wanted to create a mask with her favorite animal, a wild African dog, but she couldn’t find an image online that worked, so she settled for a tiger.
The girls just got an order for 40 masks of different sizes and images for a Wauconda food pantry. Olivia and Jaina are donating the masks to the pantry.
They’ve also donated backpacks to Mundelein School District with their profits, and given $309 to the Northern Illinois Food Bank. Its president and CEO Julie Yurko wrote them a thank you note, saying, “Your gift is providing hope to many neighbors who are struggling to make ends meet.”
Olivia and Jaina’s parents tell them when they receive gifts of money to save some of it, spend some on themselves and give some to charity. That lesson led to their decision to donate their profits.
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“We wanted to give the money to people who need it,” Olivia said. “We don’t need all the profits. We just want to do something good with the profit instead of keeping it for ourselves.
Meanwhile, customers are thinking of more ideas for the young entrepreneurs. Diane Hauder of Libertyville said she saw a Christmas ornament that said “Merry X-Mask,” and thinks that’s a great idea for 2 Little Mask Makers.
“I can’t wait to see what the girls come up with for Halloween and Christmas,” Hauder said on their Facebook page. More information is available at https://www.facebook.com/2MaskMakers.