INCubatoredu sparks student-run businesses

Mountain Brook High School became the first school in Alabama to launch its own INCubatoredu program last school year. 

The program, started in Illinois, teaches entrepreneurship skills to students and allows them to create their own businesses. 

Twenty-two Mountain Brook juniors and seniors enrolled in the course for its inaugural year, which teacher Brooke Hawkins labeled a success. 

“Even for these kids that don’t receive funding, I think this is a class they’re going to look back on and realize the impact it had on them,” Hawkins said. 

The 22 students divided into six teams at the beginning of the 2018-19 academic year. Groupings were formed based on the results of an assessment that identified individuals’ unique strengths. From there, students began developing their business concepts. 

Hawkins had advised them to search over the summer for problems that they encountered in everyday life so they could begin to formulate solutions once the school year began. It didn’t take long for Austin Sikora, now a rising senior, to pinpoint a problem he wanted to solve. Repeat complaints from customers at the shoe store where he worked crystallized his vision. 

“Some of the customers that were coming in, they kept coming to me with the same problem,” Sikora said, “that the shoelaces were either too long or frayed, and that’s when I came up with the product. I was trying to think of a way to fix the laces without having to buy new laces or shorter laces.” 

Sikora and his three Mountain Brook teammates — James Burkett, James Childs and Sam Sullivan — spent the school year inventing a specialty aglet called Lace-Mate. An aglet is  the plastic tube at the end of a shoelace.

“Ours is basically a two-piece, clip-on aglet,” said Childs, a 2019 MBHS graduate. “You clip it together on the end of your lace, and it functions to either shorten your lace or to fix the laces that are frayed.” 

Childs, his Lace-Mate team and the rest of the INCubatoredu students gradually learned how to turn their ideas into viable enterprises.

They completed academic units that touched on all facets of business, from customer segmentation and marketing to pricing and sales plan development. Local businessmen and women often served as guest lecturers, and each team was assigned a professional mentor. 

The mentors included Mason Morris, vice president of Southern States Bank; Ginger and Tommy Mayfield, co-founders of Wyndy; Knox Richardson of Richardson Technology; Kim Lee, founder of Forge; Ben Morris, founder of FuelFox; and Patrick Dennis of Summit Renovation. 

Grantland Rice, CEO of Cobbs Allen, filled the role of community champion and helped link students with their mentors. 

“They really helped get these students connected with resources to further develop their product or service,” Hawkins said. 

The INCubatoredu course culminated on May 6, when teams presented their business pitches to a judges panel at the Innovation Depot downtown. 

Lace-Mate emerged as the big winner and was awarded $8,000 in funding. Sikora said that money will go toward creating a manufacturable prototype of the aglet. He eventually would like to get the product, which will retail for $2.99, in stores. 

“That’s the goal,” he said. 

This summer, Childs said the group intends to apply for a patent with the help of a local attorney, who has offered his services free of charge. 

Additionally, Lace-Mate could receive more funding if it’s selected to present at the national INCubatoredu student pitch competition held in Chicago in July. 

As of press time, group members were waiting to find out if Lace-Mate had been chosen. 

Even if it isn’t, Childs said he and Burkett both plan to stay involved with the product when they head off to college in the fall. 

Rising seniors Sikora and Sullivan, meanwhile, will enroll in an accelerated INCubatoredu course at the high school as they further develop the business. 

“If you take this class, it can really tell you a lot about yourself and tell you if it’s something you want to pursue in college,” said Childs, who intends to study business at Southern Methodist University. “It was really learning how to learn from your mistakes and pivot.” 

Like Sikora and Sullivan, rising senior Henry Tynes will be back at MBHS next year to work on his business, Over the Mountain Crates. It secured $2,000 in funding at the pitch night in May.  Tynes said Over the Mountain Crates sells crates, or boxes, that include a custom T-shirt and popular fan gear — like shakers and banners — before the fall, winter and spring athletic seasons. 

Tynes developed the idea with teammates Brooks Autrey, Jake Gilbert and Mark Smith. Their target market is composed primarily of students in Mountain Brook elementary schools, though Tynes said the crates will be available for anyone to purchase through the MBHS website. 

“We just want elementary school students to show up to more games and be more involved with high school sports,” Tynes said. 

The group plans to use its funding to further develop its website and advertise on social media. Tynes said the goal is to begin filling orders in the fall. Boxes will sell for $29.99, and 10% of each purchase will be donated to the high school. 

“Currently, we’re going to test it in Mountain Brook and make sure it actually works,” Tynes said. “We plan to, if it’s successful, move it to other schools locally.”