Entrepreneur Noah Heaven, 14, has put a new twist on the lemonade stand business model.
Combining his love for 3D computer modeling and the current Pokémon Go craze, Heaven has started selling key chains for fans of the game.
He first got the idea while out at Prince’s Island park in Calgary.
“I saw there was a rare Pokémon somewhere and there was at least 200 people near it,” he said, “I thought if some of them would buy… keychains that would be pretty big.”
Heaven has always had the initiative to find ways to work.
“Ever since he was little if it would snow he would get the snow shovel and walk down the street knocking on everybody’s door and say can I shovel your driveway?’,” said Heaven’s mom Amy Heaven.
Players of Pokémon Go are automatically sorted into one of three colour coded teams, red, yellow or blue.
Heaven, who has been using a program called Blender to create 3D models since he was 11 years old, has created models of each of the three teams’ symbols. He then had them 3D printed by a company in Calgary.
“It takes about an hour for each keychain to print them,” he said.
Heaven printed 10 blue team keychains and five each of yellow and red.
“I looked up some charts and apparent 40% of everyone playing Pokémon go is on team blue,” he said.
He originally downloaded Blender when he was 11 years old because he wanted to do an animation.
As he taught himself how to use the program by watching online videos he discovered that he enjoyed 3D modeling.
“I’m not quite animating yet but I’ve been doing a lot of 3D modeling,” said Heaven.
“3D modeling is pretty fun I didn’t realize how fun it would be,” he said “I’ll put Spotify on in the background and for an hour or two I’ll just model something.”
His mom is proud of the hard work he has been putting into this hobby.
“I think if he’s going to be spending time looking at a screen I’d rather have him creating something and learning,” said his mom.
The keychains took him a couple weeks to design and were worth every minute of it he said.
“It was pretty fun the whole process,” said Heaven.
“When I picked them up it was pretty cool to think I made this,” he said.
If he continues to be successful, Heaven has plans to try other designs and products.
“I think I’ll probably make a few other things…maybe like little desk ornaments,” he said.
