The entrepreneurial spirit of young people was on display Saturday in downtown Geneva during the Geneva Children’s Business Fair.
Despite the forecast for rain, the event at 100 S. Third St. continued under a slew of tents that organizers said would be packed with a record number of participants including Amber Salzman and her son Will, 11, of Geneva who were selling rainbow bracelets.
Amber Salzman said that, in terms of cultivating the entrepreneurial spirit in kids, “it’s very, very important to get them to understand that there is work involved.”
“They have to come and set up the tent. They have to have supplies and talking with customers,” she said. “We were just talking about chatting it up and how do you make change with bills. It’s a good thing for these kids to do when young.”
“I might have a business when I get older,” Will Salzman said. “I don’t want to do taxes or random, boring stuff. Just selling stuff, but I don’t know exactly yet.”
Cam Fozo, who is co-president of the Geneva Children’s Business Fair, said the annual event is a popular one.
“This year, we have 83 booths … our largest of all time,” with about 160 young people participating, he said.
Last year’s total was more like 80 to 100 kids, Fozo said, noting that a local marketing campaign was undertaken this time at local schools as well as partnering with three elementary schools in the area.
“We talked to a variety of ages of kids from second to fifth grade and that really helped us garner some new attention that we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten from the community,” he said. “Our age span is from kids
6 to 16 years old.”
Some of the booths included food businesses including bakeries and lemonade stands and a dirty soda booth. There were also a lot of 3-D printing businesses creating items for participants.
“We also have artists here and somebody who wrote his own novel coming in to try and sell copies to fairgoers,” Fozo said. “We’ve got pretty much everything.”
Many of the booths are “repeats,” Fozo said, adding that “they keep coming back every year after having such a great experience with the business fair and they love the selling and marketing component.”
One of those repeaters was Frankie Perna, 11, of Geneva, who was back for the third year selling lemonade and popcorn.
“Since the first year, we’re now doing popcorn too after the first time when we just sold lemonade,” she said. “Each of the past two years, I’ve made about $200 each time. I’ve saved some of it and spent
some. I’ve learned to have things look nice and I’ll tell people you have to know what you’re doing and you need the right price and having a good margin.”
Dustin Perna said his daughter is “very entrepreneurial and is a hard worker and I think she has the
future at her fingertips.”
Fozo said the business aspect of the event provides lessons for the young people involved.
“Being a business owner is something that teaches you to be resilient, which is something we really want in today’s youth,” Fozo said. “With all the rapid change going on in the world, it’s important that people
learn to adapt to sudden changes and come up with clever solutions to problems that haven’t been thought of before.”
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David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.