Buffalo Grove students win contest with idea born in laundry

A team from Buffalo Grove High School wowed a group of investors last week at the Northwest Suburban High School District 214 Startup Showcase - and wound up with $2,500 in startup money for their business concept.

The five upperclassmen, all from Arlington Heights, conceived the idea of the Hoodie Hoop. By the time they pitched their product to the judges, they already had sold 75 of the devices and were making money.

It all began with doing the laundry.

Senior Emily Zint, the only girl on the team, says she came up with the idea while sorting her clothes.

"We were trying to think of everyday problems that you needed to solve," Zint says. "I thought of this one when I was doing my laundry and the drawstring came out of my hoodie."

She presented her problem to her classmates, who were all enrolled in Buffalo Grove's entrepreneurship class. What if they designed an apparatus that would thread the drawstring through a hoodie or sweatpants, she asked them.

"Originally, it wasn't our number one; we actually passed it by," says junior Greg Harner. "But the more we looked at it, the more we thought it was a problem everyone had."

The entrepreneurship class at Buffalo Grove is new this year, following in the footsteps of ones launched last year at Elk Grove and Wheeling high schools. Hersey and Rolling Meadows high schools also began offering the class this year. They all took their lead from a business startup course at Barrington High School.

The class is structured like a business incubator, with professionals from the business community serving as mentors, taking the teens through research and development, legal aspects, financials and marketing, leading ultimately to the final pitch.

"This is like a college-level entrepreneurship class," says Karen Roberts, a Buffalo Grove teacher. "Our motto is 'running lean.'"

The Hoodie Hoop team was paired with Matthew Grana, vice president of Grand Frame in Arlington Heights, as their mentor.

"We worked on everything together - from product development and marketing to profit margins and pricing," Grana says. "It was a total team effort."

Beginning last fall, the team experimented with different components to make their device. They started by duct taping a clip to the end of chopsticks and eventually ended up with fastening an alligator clip to the end of a narrow nylon rod.

"We probably tried out 15 different prototypes," says senior Thomas Shirley. "It was all trial and error."

The team made their pitch during a trial showcase at Buffalo Grove High School, when all 12 teams from their class described their business models.

The Hoodie Hoop won that round and earned the chance to take their business to the ultimate prize - the Startup Showcase and the chance to win funding from District 214's Education Foundation.

They competed against teams from Elk Grove, Hersey, Rolling Meadows and Wheeling, as well as another team from Buffalo Grove that won a wild-card spot.

Judges included Joan Dubnicka, an entrepreneurship professor at Harper College; Margarita Geleske, executive director of INCubatoredu; Larry Moats, of Moats Office Properties; Mike Trotzke, an entrepreneur and investor; and Max Temkin, co-creator of the game Cards Against Humanity.

"We practiced our pitch literally for like 10 hours," said senior Brian Grunst. "I think the fact that we had a simple device, that we already had made and were selling, made the difference."

Immediately upon winning, the judges began tweeting about the Hoodie Hoop team. Temkin, in particular, tweeted out the website for Hoodie Hoop, leading to more than 400 hits that night.

"It was crazy," said senior Will Sobecki. "We've never seen anything like that before. Up until then, we'd maybe get four hits a day."

Since winning the showcase, one judge offered the team pro-bono legal services for their device, which costs $7.95 and is available at hoodiehoop.weebly.com, while another offered them workspace in Chicago.

"Our end goal is getting (the Hoodie Hoop) into stores," Grunst added, "but the opportunity to meet all of these influential people is something we might never get again."