Whitefish teen with a knack for business
Miles Friedman might be a 40-year-old
chief executive trapped in a 13-year-old’s body. It’s certainly
easy to forget he’s only in seventh grade after glancing over his
daily routine.
Wake up at 5:45 a.m. and check business
e-mails until 8 a.m. Go to school until 3:30 p.m., then it’s back
to the office to fill and package orders — and answer more
e-mails.
Squeeze in a little homework, eat
dinner and fill more orders until it’s finally time for bed at
10:30 p.m.
Eerily absent from this routine are
mindless video games and TV time. But Friedman isn’t a typical
teenager — he’s a full-fledged business owner pulling down more
cash in a week than the average high school graduate will pocket in
a month.
The Whitefish Middle School student
owns and operates the Creekwood Fingerboard Store out of his
upstairs bedroom. In two years, Friedman has grown the company into
one of the most recognizable brands on the fingerboard market.
Fingerboards are micro skateboards
about the size of stick of gum that riders perform skateboarding
tricks with using only two fingers. The boards are often used in
miniature fingerboard skate parks featuring tiny ramps and rails.
The activity is widely popular among teens, especially in
Europe.
Friedman isn’t exactly a fanatic about
fingerboarding. He simply sees entrepreneurial potential in a
“scene that is growing tremendously.”
“I’d been looking to start some kind of
business,” Friedman said about the start-up. “It could have been
anything, T-shirts or whatever. I’ve always had a knack for money —
I was mowing lawns at eight years old.”
After coming across online videos of
fingerboarding, he was sold on the activity as a business
concept.
Friedman saved up thousands of dollars
to buy his first fingerboard mold. He designed the boards using CAD
software and spent the next year perfecting the construction
process.
Each board features five layers of
veneer wood pressed together using a special glue concoction. The
shape is sanded, and a lacquer is applied to protect it. Tiny skate
trucks and wheels are added separately.
Creekwood’s niche in the market comes
from Friedman’s ability to do custom designs and pay attention to
the details of each board. He wants to be the Lexus or Rolls Royce
of fingerboard companies, not the Wal-Mart.
“I want to put out the perfect
product,” he said. “If it isn’t just right, it goes in the
garbage.”
Friedman’s marketing is mostly through
online fingerboard forums and YouTube videos, yet his boards have
touched nearly every corner of the globe, including Europe, Asia
and the Americas. He rarely sells boards locally, noting that
fingerboarding isn’t very popular here.
To amp up the business’ image, he
recently launched a fingerboard team that sponsors stand-out riders
using Creekwood products — a marketing tactic often used by skate
and snowboard shops. A group of his riders will go to Boston this
year for a competition and he’s paying to send a rider to Germany
for one of the largest fingerboard expos in the world.
Through a combination of his superior
product and business smarts, Friedman’s company is healthily on the
black side of the accounting ledger. He’s making up to $1,000 in
sales a day and can fill 80 orders at a time.
Currently, he’s making six boards a day
that sell for $12 to $25 a piece. His goal for the next year is to
grow production to 30-50 boards a day, but for that he’d need
employees.
“My goal for next year is to have a
small office and a 1-800 number and to be able to handle more
volume,” Friedman said. “At this rate, I won’t need to get a job in
high school.”
Creekwood isn’t a business model
Friedman is banking on to last forever. He says the scene could
“crash and burn any day,” but he knows he’ll be involved with the
business world in some form throughout his career — a career that’s
starting alongside puberty.
“I don’t just want to sit around and
watch TV or play video games,” Friedman said, “I want to do
something with my childhood.”
To learn more about Creekwood products,
visit online at www.creekwoodfbs.com.