PEA RIDGE — He may be in middle school, but he’s already an entrepreneur.
Clayton Brown has a business and is doing quite well with it.
Brown, 13, received a paracord - or survival - bracelet for Christmas. He liked it. His friends liked it. So, he learned how to make it and has been selling them to others.
He made one for his mother, a nurse at a local hospital. She said her co-workers liked the bracelet and ordered some for themselves.
Brown, the fourth of Gary and Jerene Brown’s five children, is in seventh grade at Pea Ridge Middle School. He made bracelets for his siblings.
“I wore it to school and everybody liked it. I looked it up and started making them,” he said. Sofar, he has four colors of paracord - red, yellow, purple and black.
He said he ran out of his first supply of cord really quick and had to order more.
He made solid colored bracelets as well as two-color bracelets.
After school, he does his homework and chores, then weavesbracelets, and weaves bracelets.
“It holds a lot of cord,” Brown said, explaining that there is about 10 feet of cord in a 7-inch bracelet, which is why it is calleda survival bracelet. The bracelet can be unwoven to provide cord for survival needs. He said theparacord can actually be unwoven as well to make fishing line.
“It took me a while to figure out the technique,” he said. “I’m saving up for a paintball gun.”
He has made bracelets that fasten with a knot as well asones that fasten with clips.
Brown said there are wider bracelets made as well as necklaces. He has a cord on the end of a knife which he wove using the same technique.
One of the downfalls is that he has burned his fingerswhile burning the ends of the nylon cord to melt them to prevent fraying. But, a little pain, and a blister, haven’t stopped this young businessman, whose fingers nimbly wove the cord around itself making another bracelet even as he answered questions.
News, Pages 1 on 04/25/2012