Growing up alongside the Internet I had often felt the world was my oyster. Have a business plan? Consider yourself an entrepreneur. It can be done so fast and efficiently, why not just blog-it-out or sell your undies for cash. Have I done either? Not yet! (And to be honest, I’m more inclined to do the latter, so this may be the last post you read.) But before I was a jaded old biddy, I truly felt I could take matters into my own hands and start myself a bonafide career.
I was 10 years old and like most of my endeavors, I started this project privately, sourcing materials from places I shouldn’t have (re: projects Bye-Bye-Bangs or Nair for Arms: Does it Work? The conclusion to that experiment was a hard yes, by the way. But my obsession with hair removal? A mystery.) Oh, and did I mention I’m an only child, and therefore an entitled control freak? Or that valuable belongings and scissors should have never crossed paths with my soft-baby-hands? With all of that taken into consideration, imagine me re-purposing fabric and hot-gluing ragged strips of fabric into TUBE TOPS for BRATZ DOLLS. Oh, and not just any Bratz Dollz, but Bratz Dolls minis. The dolls were about 3 inches tall–well, 2 inches if you took off their shoes and exposed their pegs for legs–making the “shirts” centimeter wide rolled up scraps of fabric with dollops of stringy hot glue dangling away. The thing is, that’s fine, right? “Cute, she made some doll clothes!” they’d say. But no, I wasn’t making doll clothes for my own dolls, I wouldn’t do that to Yasmin or Jade. Instead, I was making them to sell on eBay.
By the time my mom found me, I was already in cahoots with my business strategy. I’d made the eBay account, I’d built the set to photograph my models (which was a folder I had set upright, which was from math class, so obviously is was blue), and I’d taken the photos to publicize my creations. When my mom told me I couldn’t sell this junk I was truly dismayed. “What do you mean I can’t sell this online for an immeasurable profit?” To be honest, I’m still kind of upset I wasn’t allowed to go through with it. Can you imagine where I’d be now?
Candice Chantalou 