Thursday, April 19, 2012

Entrepreneurship in Action

We just finished watching this as a family:


Here's the story:

Caine Monroy is a 9-year old boy who spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store.

Caine dreamed of the day he would have lots of customers visit his arcade, and he spent months preparing everything, perfecting the game design, making displays for the prizes, designing elaborate security systems, and hand labeling paper-lunch-gift-bags. However, his dad’s autoparts store (located in an industrial part of East LA) gets almost zero foot traffic, so Caine’s chances of getting a customer were very small, and the few walk in customers that came through were always in too much of a hurry to get their auto part to play Caine’s Arcade. But Caine never gave up.

One day, by chance, I walked into Smart Parts Auto looking for a used door handle for my ’96 Corolla. What I found was an elaborate handmade cardboard arcade manned by a young boy who asked if I would like to play. I asked Caine how it worked and he told me that for $1 I could get two turns, or for $2 I could get a Fun Pass with 500 turns. I got the Fun Pass.


P.S. Guess what my kids are doing now? ;)

3 comments:

Nealy said...

That's the best thing I've seen in a long time! Love his security measure and coupon awards! The kid is genius! I cried tears of joy for him.

MommaofMany said...

Thanks for sharing that. It's amazing what one guy with a camera and internet access can do to change a boy's life! I'm glad Caine's creativity and imagination haven't been squelched by his ps education! I imagine that he can now wear his shirt to school without being picked on or teased.

MommaofMany said...

Thanks for sharing that. It's amazing what one guy with a camera and internet access can do to change a boy's life! I'm glad Caine's creativity and imagination haven't been squelched by his ps education! I imagine that he can now wear his shirt to school without being picked on or teased.