He Couldn't Find the Snow Pants, So He Made Them

Snow pants. With flames on them.

Ethan Eriksen, a junior at Barron High School in Wisconsin, went looking for a specific pair of snow pants with a flame design. He couldn't find them anywhere. Not in stores, not online.

So in 2024 he started Shrederz Attire and made them himself.

In March 2026 he won Junior Achievement of Wisconsin's Young Entrepreneur competition in Milwaukee, taking home Wisconsin Young Entrepreneur of the Year, a $5,000 scholarship, and the Viewer's Choice award with an extra $500 in cash.

What I like here is how unglamorous the idea is. No app. No AI. No pitch about disrupting anything. A kid wanted a product that didn't exist and decided he could solve that.

That's the whole thing. That's how most real businesses start.

Because you've already done the hardest part without noticing: you found a real customer with a real unmet want, and that customer is you.

Most young entrepreneurs start backwards. They brainstorm ideas, pick the most impressive-sounding one, then go hunting for someone who might want it. Exhausting, and it rarely works.

Ethan started with a want he actually had. He knew what the product should look like because he'd been imagining it while shopping. He knew where the gap was because he'd fallen into it.

There's a name for this, scratching your own itch, and it's how a surprising number of companies began. You don't need the jargon though. Just notice the moment you go looking for something and come back empty-handed.

Here's a small exercise for any kid reading this. For two weeks, write down every time you wanted something and couldn't find it, or found it but it was wrong somehow. Too expensive. Wrong color. Doesn't fit. Doesn't exist.

Most of those notes will be nothing. One or two might be a business.

It came back wrong.

Eriksen's early prototypes weren't what he wanted. Reports describe him struggling early on with samples that came back as something less than he'd pictured. This is the part of the story that gets skipped in most highlight reels, and it's the part that actually matters.

Here's what a first prototype usually looks like. Color off. Stitching loose. Sizing strange. Logo too big or in the wrong spot. You open the package you waited six weeks for, and your heart sinks.

And this is the exact moment most teen businesses die. Not from lack of money and not from lack of talent. The idea felt exciting right up until a box arrived with a disappointing version of it inside.

Eriksen kept going. He revised, reordered, and eventually made his first sale to a customer in Washington state.

A stranger, two thousand miles away, who had never met him. That first sale to someone outside your family is the real milestone, because it proves the thing exists in the world and not just in your head.

The path is more accessible than it looks, and it hasn't changed much.

Start with a drawing. Not a good one. Just clear enough that someone else understands what you mean. What does it look like from the front, back, and side? Where does the design sit? What colors?

Then find a manufacturer that does small runs. Search the product category plus "custom" plus "low minimum order." Alibaba works. So do local screen printers and small apparel shops, harder to find but much easier to talk to when something goes wrong.

Ask for a sample before you order quantity. Always. Every time. A sample costs $30 to $80 and saves you from a garage full of unsellable inventory.

Expect the first sample to be wrong. Budget for a second and a third. This isn't failure, it's the process, and knowing that in advance is most of the battle.

Then sell a few before you make many. Presell to friends, post it, take orders. If ten people say they'd buy it and zero people buy it, you learned something important for free.

A parent's part in this is mostly logistics: an adult name on the shipping account, help reading a supplier contract, and a willingness not to rescue every problem. The struggle with the bad prototype was the education.

Worth knowing, because none of them are tech companies either.

Abby Sommer from Appleton runs SommerMedia Photography. Kaylee Dobke and Danielle Gustafson from North Fond du Lac built Repeluxe. Caden Vroman from Verona runs Neighborhood Lawn Care. Each took home a $1,500 semifinalist scholarship.

Photography. A lawn care business. Two students working together on a product.

The lesson in that list: judges aren't looking for the most futuristic idea. They want evidence a real business exists. Customers who paid, numbers the founder understands, a problem they can explain in one sentence.

Neighborhood Lawn Care is not a novel concept. It's a teenager who found customers, did the work, and can tell you what he charges and why. That beats a clever idea with no customers every single time.

If your kid is discouraged because their idea seems too ordinary, this is the counterexample to point at.

For most kids running something real, yes, and the prize money is the least of it.

The deadline does the work. A competition gives you a date, and a date turns a vague plan into a finished pitch. Plenty of teen businesses only get organized because someone had to explain them to strangers by March.

The preparation forces clarity too. To compete you need to know your costs, your price, your margin, and who buys from you. A lot of young founders discover during prep that they've been losing money on every sale. Better to find that out in a practice room.

The scholarships are real money. Eriksen's $5,000 plus $500 cash isn't nothing, and $1,500 semifinalist awards make the odds of leaving with something decent.

And the network sticks. Judges are usually local business owners. Some of them become customers, mentors, or the person who introduces your kid to their first supplier.

Junior Achievement runs these in most states, with national versions too. Look up your state chapter and check the entry window. Most open in winter with spring finals.

Less than you think, but not nothing.

Say yes to the first order. The amounts are usually small, $100 to $300 for a sample run, and it's the cheapest tuition available. Frame it as a loan if that fits your family. Getting paid back is part of the lesson.

Don't fix the prototype. When the box arrives wrong, your instinct will be to email the supplier yourself. Sit on your hands. Let your kid write that email badly, then help them make it better next time.

Ask about numbers, not feelings. What did it cost, what did you sell it for, what's left? Kids who can answer those three at 16 are ahead of a lot of adults. If writing it down helps, a notebook works, and so does a planning tool like Foundra that keeps costs, pricing and margin in one view.

Handle only what legally requires an adult. Bank accounts, contracts, tax questions, anything needing a signature from someone over 18. Everything else, let them own.

And take the boring parts seriously. Ethan's business is snow pants with flames on them. It's also inventory, shipping, customer messages, and cash flow. That second list is the actual education, and it transfers to anything he does next.

• Ethan Eriksen, a Barron High School junior, founded Shrederz Attire in 2024 after failing to find snow pants with a flame design.
• He won Wisconsin Young Entrepreneur of the Year in March 2026, with a $5,000 scholarship plus $500 as Viewer's Choice winner.
• His early prototypes came back wrong. He revised and made his first sale to a customer in Washington state.
• The strongest business ideas for young founders usually come from something they wanted and couldn't find.
• Order a sample before a production run, and expect the first one to disappoint.
• Fellow finalists ran a photography business and a lawn care service. Ordinary businesses win these competitions when the numbers are real.
• Parents should fund the first small order, help with anything legally requiring an adult, and resist fixing problems the kid can handle.

Who won the 2026 Junior Achievement Young Entrepreneur competition in Wisconsin? Ethan Eriksen, a junior at Barron High School, won Wisconsin Young Entrepreneur of the Year in March 2026 for Shrederz Attire, a winter apparel company he started in 2024. He received a $5,000 scholarship and a $500 Viewer's Choice cash prize.

How does a teenager get a product manufactured? Sketch the design clearly, find a manufacturer that accepts low minimum orders, and always request a paid sample before ordering quantity. Samples typically run $30 to $80 and prevent costly mistakes on a full production run.

What if the first prototype comes back wrong? That's normal and expected. Most first samples have issues with color, sizing, or placement. Document exactly what's wrong with photos, send specific corrections, and order a revised sample. Budget for two or three rounds.

Where can teens enter business competitions? Junior Achievement runs Young Entrepreneur competitions through state chapters across the U.S., typically with entries in winter and finals in spring. Many high schools, chambers of commerce, and universities also host their own pitch events.

How much money do parents need to give a teen starting a product business? Often $100 to $300 covers an initial sample and a very small first run. Many families treat it as a loan repaid from sales, which adds a useful lesson about capital and repayment.

Do teen businesses need to be tech companies to be taken seriously? No. Recent Junior Achievement finalists included photography and lawn care businesses. Judges care about paying customers, understood numbers, and a clearly explained problem far more than about how novel the idea sounds.

1. FOX6 Milwaukee: Winner named in Junior Achievement's Young Entrepreneur competition
2. WisBusiness: Junior Achievement of Wisconsin, Teen startup shreds as Young Entrepreneur of the Year
3. FOX8: Barron County teen wins Junior Achievement Young Entrepreneur Competition
4. Junior Achievement of Wisconsin: JA Young Entrepreneur Competition, Statewide
5. TeenLife: Competitions for Teen Entrepreneurs