Business Opportunities Weblog

October 17, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Toledo Free Press:

Marissa Milliron isn’t your typical entrepreneur. Sure, she came up with an original idea and found a way to produce, market and sell it like any budding businesswoman would. She’s got her tax identification number, a checking account and a debit card for business expenses.

And in a little more than four years, she’ll have a driver’s license to hand deliver the homemade treats she created to pooches.

Marissa, 11, started her organic dog treat business, Marissa’s Organic Doggie Treats, late last year after her mother, Susan, attended a trade show and met a woman who sold a similar product. “I thought that was so cool, so I decided to make a business out of it,” said the sixth-grader.

It took about three test runs to get their recipes to meet the standards of their four pooches, Bo, Pugs, Lucky and Zee, Marissa said. What they wound up with, she said, were three different flavors of treats — Pugs-Alicious Peanut Butter Muffies, Zee-Tacular Apple-Cinnamon Drops and Bo’s Bodacious Chicken Biscuits.

Marissa plans to donate 5 percent of all her profits to Humane Ohio and 5 percent to the Toledo Area Humane Society, she said. What will she do with the other 90 percent of her profits?

“She’s paying back her investors,” Susan said with a smile.

Photo by Toledo Free Press.

In Entrepreneurship, Kids, Success | 1 Comment