Lifestyles

Jenna Bethany winner of the Eighth Annual Celebration for Young Entrepreneurs
business competition for ages 6-11. Photo by David Lowe

In less than a year from the start of her business Jazzies by Jenna, Jenna Bethany has won the top honor in the eighth annual Celebration for Young Entrepreneurs business competition for ages 6-11.

The awards ceremony was held Sept. 10 in Denver. Included in the total recognition, Bethany received $1,000 for her first-place finish, and assigned a mentor, Donna Lynne, president of Kaiser Permanente Colorado.

Bethany is 11, and is in the sixth grade at Lewis-Palmer Middle School. She started her business, Jazzies by Jenna in October 2008. The idea that led to her entrepreneurial award was making unique custom handmade necklace cords from colored ribbon yarns. This offered the consumer a choice to the standard black necklace cord.

She took classes at the Bead Corner on how to finish off the cords with either wire linking or wire wrapping.

Today she has expanded her business to include bracelets, earrings and pendants that compliment her necklace cords.

The first commercial test for her idea came last winter when she was invited to sell her ribbon cords in a home that invited “artists and friends” to show their wares. It was a success, as she sold 50 percent of the 150 items she had taken. This success further led to sales at Focus on the Family, schools, medical offices and Young Entrepreneurs Market Place in Denver.

She has been invited to expand her showings at craft fairs at the YMCA and the Palmer Lake Art Group’s Christmas craft fair.

Her line is available locally at the Bead Corner and Expectations Salon in Monument, as well as on her new Internet site www.jazziesbyjenna.com.

She was busy during the summer months expanding her line both in styles and quantity including developing a new line called Faith, Hope and Love, the proceeds from which will go to orphans of AIDS victims in Africa.

Bethany’s energy is not limited to her business endeavors. Besides her homework, she has taken piano for six years and practices 35 minutes a day. Her newest musical acquisition is the trumpet, which she plays in the school band and adds another 30 minutes of practice time to her daily routine.

As if two musical instruments weren’t enough, she plans adding guitar to her musical ensemble in the near future.

In the sports realm, she plays volleyball in the fall and spring at the YMCA and basketball in the winter. She skis green and blue slopes, rides both street and mountain bikes, and loves to camp, hike, fish and trap.

Somewhere between all the activities she finds time for an herb garden and to love her cat, Lily.

She is a member of the leading ladies, a school club only available for sixth-grade girls involved in service projects.

She is active in the Heifer Project at school where they’re in the process of developing a cook book from which the sale proceeds will go to the Heifer Organization that buys animals to give to villages around the world.

The Young Americans Center has produced a video on Jenna Bethany and Jazzies by Jenna, it can be found on you tube at http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkP4MvPa6B0.
Type in “Jazzies by Jenna” in the search box.

Jenna Bethany can be reached at info@jazziesbyjenna.com.