Joshua Moore is an inventor at heart, but he realized he needed money to develop
his invention, the Stroller Stopper. So he launched Personal Affections, a business
selling custom made decals and stickers, picture magnets, greeting cards, key chains
and other products in his school, Walhalla High. Joshua wrote his business plan
as a freshman in the NFTE course at Walhalla High in South Carolina.
Joshua came up with the idea for the Stroller Stopper because “I have a younger
sister, and if anything happened to her I would be devastated,” he says. “Wouldn’t
everyone want their child to be safe?” He and his father worked out the idea over
time and came up with a prototype. Joshua hopes to patent the Stroller Stopper.
He plans to keep Personal Affections going to help finance his invention.
Q: What is your business?
Josh: My business is Personal Affections and it’s like a personal memento business,
it sells photo albums. Our population in our school is mostly girls and I figure
girls will select photos and I sell photo magnets, collages, frames, key chains
and stickers and decals and I used the money that I generated from the business
to develop a new product for baby strollers. It’s a safer baby stroller braking
system.
Q: Why did you choose to focus on baby strollers?
Josh: I was actually sitting in the park one day, and I’ve got a little sister,
she’s adopted from China. She was the inspiration for this. I’m sure every brother
who has a sister wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. Safety is an important
thing. The ordinary braking system is very hard to push down and get back up and
not very safe. My system actually is very easy, you just push in a lever and a metal
bar actually drops to the floor and the wheel is picked up off the ground so it
can’t roll. It won’t tilt because the wheels are far enough off the ground. I just
have a prototype now and I’m in the process of putting a patent on it.
Q: When did you start your business?
Josh: When I first started I was 14 and I signed up for entrepreneurship class.
We started developing a business plan. We had a competition in December and I placed
second in the business plan competition for my Stroller Stopper. Then we were actually
allowed to sell a product at school this year. One day a week near lunch we’d set
up our own little stand and sell our products. I started raising a lot of money
because kids were really into it. Personal Affections was built over the course
of about 3 months.
Q: What was the hardest thing you encountered?
Josh: Well starting Personal Affections - it was frustrating to get the items here
to me in time. UPS, we had a delay on that, and then one night when I was writing
the business plan. It takes a lot of determination and my computer actually crashed
one night when I was working on this and I was so close to being done and I had
to restart all over again!
Q: What kept you going when there were problems?
Josh: The fact that I was inventing a product. I’ve been an inventor I guess since
fourth grade and it’s really determination to invent that product to make a difference.
There were a few times that I felt like I just want to quit, I don’t want to do
this anymore, but I mean overall I don’t think there was any way that I could stop,
I mean I’d come so far in.
Q: How did you finance your start-up business ?
Josh: I had some money saved up and then I borrowed from my dad.
Q: What do you like most about running a business?
Josh: That I can do it on my own time. But I can just sit down and work on it, I
don’t have to sit there and stress about it. I can do it whenever I want.
Q: Do you give back to your community in any way?
Josh: Oh yes. Philanthropy is a very important part of my business. I give to my
Community Church and we’re currently doing mission work so I give 10% of all of
my profits.
Q: What would you do differently next time if you started a business?
Josh: I would like to share the ownership with somebody just you know because doing
it all by myself is difficult. I’d love to say I did this with somebody else. And
I think it might be a little bit more fun to do it with somebody else than just
by myself.
Q: What would your advice be to other kids thinking of starting businesses?
Josh: My advice to other kids starting a business would be it might be rocky in
the beginning, but it’s straight in the end. It always pays off.
