A high school freshman from Alabama turned an eighth grade school project into a multi million dollar business has recently turned down a buy out offer of $30 million for his idea and his company. Taylor Rosenthal, 14, came up with his idea partly due to his love of playing baseball where he plays first base and pitches for Opelika High School.
As Taylor saw it, “I’ve played baseball for ten years now and every time a kid got hurt…no one could find a Band-Aid and I kinda wanted to come up with something to help that.”
So, necessity being the mother of invention, young Taylor decided to do something about that. While in a young entrepreneurs class in eighth grade, Taylor brainstormed an idea to sell pre-packaged first aid kits at events and elsewhere. The cost was too much, he thought, so with the help of his parents he developed the idea of first aid kit vending machines. He called his new company RecMed and he was off and running.
He took first place in the entrepreneurs competition and was invited to compete in a regional young entrepreneurs event down in Boca Raton, Florida. He finished third down there yet ended up attracting over $100,000 in investment money to start producing the machines and the products. It has become such a lucrative and popular business that he was recently offered $30 million for the business. He says he turned down the offer because he wanted to work on the development of the company and the products some more. He hopes in another year or two, the company will be worth more to a potential buyer.
He is now working with an entrepreneurial investment firm to further develop and market the machines. Taylor wants to put his machines anywhere, he says, kids can possibly get hurt. Six Flags recently ordered 100 machines to the tune of $5,500 each. The prototypes are set to go into production and a full fledged roll out of the machines is planned for the Fall.
Taylor is a straight A student and athlete who hopes to go on to Notre Dame to study business or medicine but, right now, he thinks he is leaning more toward business.
PHOTO CREDITS: CNBC / Fox News / RecMed First Aid Kits