CINCINNATI — A group of 14 high school kids sat nervously waiting for their team's turn to make their presentation. They had spent the past three weeks learning how to design shoes and clothing and create a cohesive business strategy around their fashion line at the Bigger Than Sneakers (BTS) Academy. Now, they just needed to present their ideas to a panel of judges.
"I'm a little emotional because like three weeks with like a group of teenagers and we actually all get along and it was really fun," 15-year-old Mariam Barry said after her presentation. "These three weeks have been like, probably like the most fun three weeks of my summer."
Barry will be a junior at Walnut Hills. She was thinking about getting a job for the summer, but once she was accepted into the BTS Academy, she decided spending a few weeks of her summer learning about marketing and design was more important.
"I think the best part about this program is like the connections. Because now we have all the contents of these people that might help us with starting our own brand or our own business and get us further," Barry said.
The BTS Academy required the handpicked students to come to "class" for three weeks from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. The students were handed brand-new iPads loaded with design programs to keep. Almost every day for the first two weeks they had guest speakers that are leaders in marketing, design and business. In their final week, they were broken up into groups and challenged to create a mock company, including budgets and a marketing program that had to be presented in front of a panel of judges.
Matt Tomamichel is the co-founder of Bigger Than Sneakers. He opened Corporate, a boutique for sneakers, 16 years ago in Hyde Park. Today, he has two more stores: one in Indianapolis and one in Dayton. So the idea of Bigger Than Sneakers was simply that; an opportunity to give the community more than foot fashion choices.
"I'm not a college graduate," Tomamichel said. "But I've owned my business for 16 years. I felt like, you know, I have something to give people with ... my network, we were like let's put this together. Let's make this a thing that we wish that we had as kids."
Tomamichel grew up in Greenhills. He remembers being in high school at Winton Woods and being scoffed at when he said he wanted to open a sneaker shop.
"If I experienced that, I can only imagine what it feels like now with social media with everything that goes on with kids, you know," Tomamichel said. "Almost like our kids have to be adults quicker. And if that's the case, then I want them to be prepared. I want them to be able to, you know, find their passion sooner."
And so, the BTS Academy was born.
One of its beneficiaries is 16-year-old SCPA student Jayden Thrasher. His sister went through the academy last summer. This summer he was chosen to be part of it and was one of Barry's teammates for their presentation. He said the three weeks have been extraordinarily impactful on him.
"I just did a presentation on sales," Thrasher said. "I didn't know anything about that — how to calculate the numbers and put them into a spreadsheet and what a gross revenue was. I had no idea what that was. So to learn about something like that, that can be applied to other things in my life, other businesses, other things I pursue in the future, that's really cool."
He said he usually just focuses on design, but learning from executives about business and the cost of running a company has opened his mind and changed his perspective. Not only that, he said he is now thinking about his future in a more real way.
"Our project was about passion," Thrasher said. "Now that I deep dive into that, now I'm starting to think, what is my passion? What do I want to do? I feel like this is kind of elevating me to a next level to think about the future."
And that is exactly what Tomamichel was hoping would happen.
"I feel like people always feel like they got to run away from our city to be great," said Tomamichel. "Now, like, you can be here and be great. We need more positive examples of 'making it' ... That's what fills me up every day."
