Ideas Fuel Young Entrepreneur
When Johnny Koch looked at his family’s property, he didn’t see a stand of pine trees, he saw a gold mine.
Knowing that some people love cutting down their own Christmas trees, Johnny decided to cash in. He put up a sign at his home and waited for the traffic. At the time, he was in the third grade.
“He convinced his dad to sell the pines,” said his mother, Brenda Koch (pronounced “Cook”). “We told him he was crazy.”
Crazy like a money-making fox. More and more people started stopping by and gladly paid Johnny $20 to cut down their own trees from the family back yard. That year he made $500.
This year Johnny is raking it in with his latest idea: Christmas wreaths. “I wanted to make money off that, too,” he said. “I know I can do it.” And he has.
His uncle makes wreaths and happened to have an extra machine, so Johnny gladly took it. He runs his little business in the garage. He clips the trees in the yard and stores the trimmings in a large box. He collects pine cones and spray paints them silver and gold. Nearby are piles of ribbons and ornaments and holly he and his mother use to decorate the final product.
So far he’s sold 65 wreaths at $10 a piece. Whenever he can, Johnny sits in a shack in a field at the corner of Ida West and Jackman Rds. where he’ll do business with customers who pull over after seeing the homemade sign that reads “Koch’s wreaths.”
Next he wants to grow flowers to sell, like mums in the fall. Although he’s made some pretty good money over the years, Johnny has put away a lot for college where he wants to pursue the field of agriculture. And when he grows up he says he wants to be a “farmer-slash-businessman.”
Photo by Mary Powers.
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