MIDDLEBURY —
Cayla Stuteville will be watching tennis great Pete Sampras play an exhibition match today in Indianapolis. That’s how she will launch her new business.
Stuteville is a Northridge High School sophomore where she is pursuing an International Baccalaureate diploma. She someday wants to tour and work in Italy. But until then, she has partnered with her mother Dalene to start an online business that will provide promotional items and clothing with logos to local businesses.
“We get to meet Pet Sampras and we are VIP guests,” Cayla said of her outing today.
The reason she will be at the match is because her company is providing T-shirts to the event. The match is sponsored by the Miracle Match Foundation, which raises money for research into cures for leukemia. MMF is one of the businesses that are utilizing Cayla’s new service.
The name of Cayla’s business is HometownsMatter.com. The company offers printing and promotional services, specifically logos on clothing, mugs, water bottles, etc. She contracts with Café Press to provide the printing and promotional items.
“They give us the ability to open an online store to give customers the ability to buy one product at a time,” Dalene said. “We found that with small businesses, mom and pop stores and diners, things like that, they don’t have the ability to buy the quality products and the inventory and all that. It is really difficult. By giving them one place to go and buy one product if they want to, that gives them access to advertising they did not have before.”
It was the lack of availability of a T-shirt for her dad that got Cayla thinking about the idea of offering the online service.
She said her father, Thad, likes the pizza at a particular Elkhart County business and attempted to buy a T-shirt to wear and promote his favorite restaurant. However, the restaurant had run out of T-shirts in his size. She thought it would be better for businesses to be able to direct customers to an online source for their products, giving them a never-ending supply of promotional materials.
And some local businesses have already thought that was a good idea.
Among those utilizing HometownsMatter.com are Rise & Roll Bakery, Anderson Animal Clinic, Firefly Facepainting and the Miracle Match Foundation.
Companies utilizing HometownsMatter.com can also specify a charity they would like some of the proceeds from the sale of their logoed items to go to.
“It’s kind of like a little coffee can, where they are supporting that kid who was just diagnosed with cancer or that family which can’t pay for a son or daughter’s funeral cost,” Dalene said.
Businesses can select any good cause to support, including local schools, libraries, charities and fund drives, according to the Stutevilles.
Businesses may also offer discounts to people who go into their store wearing their promotional T-shirt or carrying other promotional items, according to Dalene.
In this process is a small profit for Cayla.
“The business owners don’t tend to sell these products for profit, it’s to get their name out there. So it doesn’t hurt them. So she gets that, that’s how it becomes profitable for her,” Dalene said.
Northridge guidance counselor Thavisith Mounsithiraj has been cheering Cayla on. He knew she had won a $500 savings bond for her concept in a contest last year from the By Kids for Kids organization that promotes entrepreneurship for young people.
“It was last spring when you came to schedule you handed me the note and I said, ‘Cayla, you have to do something with this ...’ and here we are, going to see Pete Sampras,” Mounsithiraj told Cayla Thursday while chatting in the school’s library about her success.
The Raider sophomore is still caught up in the class work and social life of high school, but she is also extending herself into the business world.
“Whenever I tell my friends they really don’t believe me,” Cayla said. On Thursday she broke the news to two of her friends. “They were like, ‘seriously?’ Yes, I have my own business, “ Cayla said was her reply.
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Holding a T-shirt with the Hometowns Matter.com logo on it are, from left, Thavisith Mounsithiraj, guidence counselor at Northridge High School, Cayla Stuteville, sophomore at Northridge and her mother, Dalene. ROGER SCHNEIDER | THE GOSHEN NEWS
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