We are all dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways. One amazing young woman in Olympia decided to use the time she had to do something she had always wanted to do: start a business. Sleepy Slimezzz is the brainchild of 12-year-old Grace Scriven, who is entering the seventh grade this fall.
“I always wanted to have my own business, for pocket change or something,” says Grace, “but I just love slime. So, I thought it would be a good idea to sell it, because it was just sitting upstairs not doing anything. We were spending so much money on the ingredients and stuff but I wasn’t making any money off it, so I thought I should start selling it.”
Grace is somewhat of a slime expert. She has been making and playing with slime for years. She started making her own slime when her mom, Kate, noticed that the ingredients in store bought slime were less than desirable. “Store bought slime has weird chemicals and ingredients you can’t pronounce or know what they are,” explains Grace. “It can smell chemically and usually comes in a cheap container. And it can be expensive, and often is hard and dries out easily.”
Having an interest in science, particularly chemistry, Grace started experimenting on making slime for herself. “She watched a LOT of You Tube videos of famous slimers,” Kate says. And then it was basically trial and error as she made her first batches.
After making many batches of slime for herself, it turned out that she liked making slime almost more than playing with it. “It’s a fun stress reliever, but I really love to make it,” she shares. This love of making the slime is what started her thinking about turning it into a business, her mom adds. “She loved the creative aspect of adding different things to the slime, and creating new scents and colors,” Kate shares. “She would make one and then want to make another one.”
Sleepy Slimezzz was Born
At first, her parents were not on board with the business aspect of her hobby. “I will admit we resisted this for a really long time,” Kate says. “because in my mind it was sort of like, ‘Eh, slime, ridiculous’ and I am not afraid to say that, I think a lot of moms out there would also say, ‘Are you kidding me right now?’ and you know, it can be messy. But over time, we saw how responsible Grace was being about her space and her ingredients and how she started to make the labels, and get into high level stuff like marketing and design. And we thought, ‘Why are we resisting this? This is great life skills really.’ It might be slime, which you might think is silly, but what she is really doing is learning about business and learning about marketing. We track her expenses so she is learning, ‘Yay, I made a bunch of money on my first batch,’ but it all went back into buying more ingredients for the next batch. We are super proud of her.”
Sleepy Slimezzz uses ingredients people will recognize says Grace, and come in a high quality, reusable storage container. She adds high quality scents that actually smell like they are supposed to, including popular ones like lavender, cake, pina colada, mint and more. Some of these scents are so good, you may be tempted to eat it – blueberry crumb muffin anyone? And she adds other fun things including glitter, foam and plastic beads to add texture to the slime. Each order also comes with care instructions on what to do if your slime gets sticky, hard or gets onto your clothes or carpet, a small bag of borax, and some other extra goodies.
She chose Sleepy Slimezzz as her business name because she says it’s cute and easy to understand and remember. Grace comes up with design, including name and logo, of each slime herself. She makes them in big batches, but each batch is a bit of a limited edition. “If a scent is really popular, we make something similar again, but I create as I go, so each batch will be unique,” Grace shares.
Grace is also learning about how to run a business on Facebook, her mom says, including keeping her audience engaged and learning about growing a page, and converting those people into customers. She plans on continuing to create new and fun slimes.
Of course, the best test is what the kids think. Grace’s customers are loving the feel and texture of Sleepy Slimezzz. “I like that there’s a lot of different colors and textures,” says seven-year-old Axel.
“It feels so weird and cool!!,” adds five-year-old Ryland.
And parents are loving the high-quality ingredients that make up Sleepy Slimezzz. “I have resisted buying slime for my kids because most of them are filled with ingredients I don’t want them handling (and it grosses me out!),” says Anna Jackson. “But when I heard that Grace makes her own slime, I was immediately interested in trying some out. I love that she uses safe ingredients, and the kids love the extra details she offers with colors, scents, beads, etc. Her customer service is also fantastic! I will be recommending her products to all of my friends.”
You can purchase Sleepy Slimezzz directly from Grace by visiting the Sleepy Slimezzz Facebook page.
