From selling clothing to school supplies, there are students at Parkway South who are entrepreneurs through the Spark! program. The Spark! program is available to all students in the Parkway district.

One business run by two of these students is called FREed.

Owned by junior Luke Bauer and his partner junior Wes Mourton, FREed is a company that sells school supplies. Then, they give school supplies to other children around the country that cannot afford to buy their own.

“My idea came from a girl at Parkway West – Katie Hornsby,” Bauer said.

They currently sell their supplies to people around school and through social media and have plans to start up a website.

Right now, the company is selling notebooks with designs on the front for $5, and with every notebook purchased, a notebook gets donated to a child in need.

Another business that was started a few years ago is Kiwi Outfitters.

The owner and marketer, Wesley Abeln, works with a student from Parkway West who is in charge of the finances.

Abeln said he came up with the idea for Kiwi Outfitters on a snowy winter day a couple of years ago.

“Two or three years ago when we had that week of snowy days, I was trapped in my house and had cabin fever really bad. I was wearing a shirt I had bought in Florida, and I remembered the month-long vacation that my family and I had spent in Australia and New Zealand. We had done a lot of crazy stuff, like we biked mountains, ziplined, and scuba dived. In New Zealand, people do the things that they love and enjoy the finer things in life. I sketched down some ideas but I needed something to call it. People in New Zealand are called ‘Kiwis’ and I decided that the kiwifruit would be a good symbol. We stand for the sweeter, finer things in life, doing the things you love with your friends. Our motto is live the Kiwi lifestyle,” Abeln said.

He said the focus of the company is people enjoying life.

“We are a lifestyle first and a brand second,” Abeln said.

The company sells T-shirts and hats, and they are planning to come out with a water bottle and a kiwi sticker.

All of the products feature designs drawn by students at South. Some include a dog on a kayak and a moose backpacking.

At the moment, all profits go back into the company to keep expanding it, but in the future, they plan to make the company something more.

“Being a clothing company is cool but I want us to have a bigger focus. We are looking to develop a partnership with the Kirkwood Haiti Orphan Project. This nonprofit works for the prevention of economical orphans,” Abeln said.

Economical orphans are children whose parents do not have money to support them. Their parents give them to orphanages because they believe that orphanages are more fit to give them the things they need like food and clothes. However, Haiti is so poor that orphanages do not really have to money to support the children either.

If the partnership is finalized, some of Kiwi Outfitters’ profits would go to support this charity, as well as a wristband promoting the charity being included with the purchased product.

A consumer of Kiwi Outfitters, junior Braxton McGee, bought a hat from the company.

“Wesley was talking about it and it sounded cool. I still wear it a lot,” McGee said.

Pb&J Personalization is another business run by two Spark! entrepreneurs, senior Paige Wunderlich and senior Jenna Sears, that specializes in monogramming.

“We were directed toward the idea. Also, we chose it because it could expand to other things,” Sears said.

They sell different sized monogram stickers and are really excited to expand to ornaments and cups.

“Paige makes all of the monograms herself, “ Sears said.

Pb&J Personalization is on Twitter, @PBandJPersonal.

A fourth business, Wrapped with Love, is owned by senior Marie Auton and senior Holly Politte. They sell handmade headwraps which are like a thick headbands. With each headwrap purchased, the company gives one to child with cancer.

Their headwraps feature boho designs and are on sale now for $14.

“We knew that we wanted to help people, and we both really like to wear headbands, so our idea came from that,” Auton said.