Southfield — Luna Stinson, 5, spent Thursday putting the finishing touches on her new product: a hand-made body butter that she plans to market to hundreds of potential customers at a pop-up event Sunday in Inkster.
She has a running start on entrepreneurship, considering she’s just entering kindergarten. Luna and her mother, Farrah Driver, were prepping to work alongside 74 other entrepreneurs ages 3 to 18 who will be advertising and selling items from 1-5 p.m. Sunday as vendors for the Youth Takeover Pop Up Shop at Bliss Event Center, 30225 Cherry Hill Road.
Such pop-up shops allow new retailers to sell their products or services at temporary sites. Luna will sell Rainbow Dust, a colorful body butter that smells like baby powder, and Sweet Unicorn, a pink, sweet-smelling butter — with the name coined by Luna — for $10 each and $15 for two.
Ahead of the pop-up event, Luna whipped shea butter and oils together, put stickers on containers, and rehearsed her sales pitch with her mom.
Driver, who started selling massage oil candles and body butters during the COVID-19 pandemic, will help Luna sell her own products, labeled as Luna’s Magical Body Butter, for the first time Sunday. They plan to take 60 containers Sunday and display them with a unicorn and rainbow theme.
“I love that she’s looking at what I’m doing and taking interest in what I’m doing,” Driver, 37, said. “As long as she wants to do it, I’m here for her. I’ll make whatever happen happen as long as she wants it.”
With her proceeds, Luna plans to buy toys, clothes and “save some at the bank,” the 5-year-old said.
Sisters Aaryn McCormick, 6, and A’Serah Walls, 6, have similar plans for their monies from selling bracelets and charms on Sunday. The girls customize bangles to a specific theme with several charms as wrist wear for their customers, who tend to spend about $20 to $45 for a custom charm and/or bracelet, according to their mother Diamond McCormick of Detroit.
“I let them save it and they like looking at and thinking it’s a million dollars, but that’s the goal, for it to one day be a million dollars,” McCormick said.
“We go around and hold up our sign so people can come to our table, we walk around with the charms,” ASerah said. “And we make money every day.”
“We tell people we sell Pandora charms and they come to us and give us some money,” Aaryn said.
Wrist Kandy was originally Diamond McCormick’s business. She started it in 2020 and passed it onto the girls in March 2024 when they participated in their first pop-up shop. Sunday will be their sixth pop-up event; they’ve closed over 200 sales to date.
“The only thing I can do is carry the table and set it out,” McCormick said. “It’s amazing just seeing … at every pop-up shop, they are determined to make their money. If they feel like they’re not doing good, they’ll come to me and be discouraged at first, then brush it off, get back out to the crowd, draw the crowd in and try to promote what they’re selling.
“It feels good to be able to let them get the feel of working for what’s theirs, making their own money and be able to be independent,” McCormick said.
Sunday’s event is organized by Lisa Carter, aka “The Queen of Pop Ups,” a monthly pop-up event coordinator who mostly partners with adult entrepreneurs. Carter said she wanted to start priming youth for entrepreneurship.
“This time, I want all the attention on the children and I want start bringing the kids up, showing them how to fend and how to make money,” she said. “This event is probably 70% all new vendors because it’s kids.”
For $40, the kids secured their spots, with some sponsored by people on Facebook, she said.
“I make them get up, walk around, pass they cards out,” Carter said. “I show them how to give out samples and communicate with the crowd because I’m seeing with the adults … a lot of times they’re sitting around and not networking, so the purpose is to teach them how to do it, so when they do become adults they know, ‘I have to get up, walk around, talk to the crowd,’ and they do that.
“And they’re so excited when they come to my events because they know I’m not going to just let them sit down at the table,” she said. “They have to really, really work.”
Depending on how the event runs, Carter says she may continue to work with youth vendors so she can keep mentoring them and encouraging them to build businesses. She highlighted 8-year-old Ethan “Boogie” DeShields of Boogie’s Bangin’ Lemonade, who sells bottles of his beverages in five gas stations in Michigan as a result of pop-ups Carter organized.
“I definitely recommend them starting a business now because there’s so many ways out here to make money. … If you start your own business, you can’t get fired … nobody can really take that away from you,” Carter said. “So … I want to get them in the habit of learning how to have their own. I’m not telling them not to get a 9-to-5, but it’s always good to have multiple streams of income.”
“This will give them a head start, because we didn’t have this growing up,” she said.
mjohnson@detroitnews.com
@_myeshajohnson
