Credit: Courtesy of Zoe Garcia

Zoe Garcia poses with one of her new hoodies. Garcia started Blondi during March of 2024.

With over 200,000 followers, a handful of students have come across junior Zoe Garcia’s TikTok. What a lot of people don’t know is that Garcia started a business at 16 years old.

According to a Harvard Business Review, the average age to start a business is between 40 and 50 years old. Starting a business at a young age can be beneficial for teens for varying reasons. Young teens can learn entrepreneurship skills, creativity skills and build their knowledge on business development. In fact, several successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg all started working towards their dreams in their early twenties.

Garcia’s brand is named Blondi, and sells merchandise that says the brand name. One of the biggest challenges Garcia faced when starting her brand at a young age was finding resources and ways to make and produce her products. Garcia had a plan for this already. A handful of people don’t turn to manufacturing somewhere far away, but for Garcia, manufacturing in California seemed like the best option for her upcoming business.

“I use a manufacturer in California and I do something called drop shipping which means I don’t hold any inventory and my manufacturer ships directly to my customer,” Garcia said.

Especially for teens, it can be a longer wait until their businesses take off. From weeks, months or years, it can take time for people to start noticing their products. Garcia felt that all her hard work had finally paid off when she noticed that real sales started to come in. Not only just the product, Garcia had to put in the work to creating a desirable website for her products.

“It took a while to create my website and to get a product that I actually thought was worthwhile,” Garcia said. “So it took me about a month before I started getting real sales.”

Blondi sells a variety of articles of clothing. Garcia takes pride in her hoodies, sweatpants, shorts and hats. A handful of people located in Wayland also support Garcia’s business. They find her apparel comfortable and reliable to wear on an everyday basis.

“I really enjoy wearing [Garcia’s] clothes because of the quality of all her products,” junior Riley O’Driscoll said. “My favorite articles of clothing are definitely her shine bright hoodie or the stargazing hoodie, they are just so comfortable and warm. Especially now that fall is coming up, it will be a staple for me to wear.”

For Garcia, the most exciting part of the whole process is seeing how much people enjoy her product. Whether it’s comments from random people on TikTok or her friends just saying they like the products.

“My favorite moment was the first TikTok I posted wearing my hoodie,” Garcia said. “It was so exciting to get comments from people wanting to know where it was from.”

Garcia also encourages people that want to start a business at a young age to do so. She found that it was a great idea for herself, and the only way to know if it will work out is to try.
“If anyone is thinking about doing the same thing or starting their own business, they should go for it,” Garcia said.