9yo girl’s glitter idea makes $350k in a year

The business took off so quickly that both her parents had to quit their day jobs to follow the lead of their 9-year-old daughter.

A 9-year-old girl’s decision to dress colourfully for school has seen her family raking in the cash, making $350,000 a year.

In 2016, Sophia Rizzo, then aged nine, had a “little idea” to bring pots of glitter to her school in Burleigh Heads, along Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Despite “getting into trouble” from her teachers, the primary school student knew there was something behind it because “I showed my friends and they all loved it”, she told news.com.au.

Sophia charged her classmates $2 for the craft glitter which she ordered online.

“She had a little notebook of orders. She would come home from school saying’ this girl wants this colour, this girl wants that colour’,” her mother, Megan, 47, recalled.

“She was so insistent, she had a whole unicorn notebook full of ideas, that blew us away a bit.

“We thought ‘we’ll just make a mini website and put it on Instagram, that’ll be the end of it, that will make her happy’.”

That was not the end of it at all; the business soon took off, causing both Sophia’s parents to quit their jobs so they could work full-time in the business — aptly named Glitter Girl.

Now aged 13 and in her second year of high school, Sophia’s idea just passed the $350,000 mark in sales for the past 12 months.

Sophia heading to school when she was nine years old with her glitter ready to sell.

Sophia’s mum Mrs Rizzo ran her own business as a photographer while her dad Adam, 50, worked in real estate, although neither had ever run an online business before.

They spent $2000 for 20 kilograms of glitter to get started.

Mrs Rizzo took a few professional snaps then launched a website in August 2017.

Then they waited for the first order to roll in. An order did indeed come — but there was something remarkable about it.

“The first order was from Tasmania and we’re from the Gold Coast,” Mrs Rizzo said, adding that she saw Glitter Girl’s potential because “we realised this wasn’t an inner circle, a warm circle, this is coming from a cold circle.”

The first week, they received around three orders a day. That soon soared to 20 orders.

Sophia and Megan Rizzo launched the business together.

Sophia was just nine when she came up with the idea.

Sophia would put the glitter in the pots and the mum and daughter duo would bring the unicorn packaging home to keep working into the night.

“We didn’t have time to do our normal jobs, we were calling in friends for help,” the girl’s mother said.

They used Mrs Rizzo’s photography studio as a warehouse and by 2018, the mum notified her clients that she would no longer be able to work for them.

“I needed to be glitter mumma full-time,” she said with a laugh. “I’m 100 per cent supporting my little girl’s idea.”

Sophia’s dad also stopped his property career to work to do the IT, stock management and invoices for Glitter Girl.

They have since experimented with glitter to avoid the “how scratchy it is on the skin” and use eco-friendly products that are “diversified”, with some bought from Melbourne and some from countries outside Australia including Vanuatu.

A breast cancer scare in 2019 saw Mrs Rizzo hire five permanent staff and scale the business up by creating a warehouse.

By the age of 10, Sophia officially launched Glitter Girl.

The company has been making $350,000 in sales.

In 2020, the business “went into overdrive” according to Mrs Rizzo, with orders increasing five times.

“What we did in a month before the Covid pandemic, we did in a week during Covid,” she explained.

They are stocked in 90 stores around the country, including in regional areas, in every state except the Northern Territory.

The Rizzo family. Picture: Supplied.

Sophia has been key to the business’s ongoing success.

“Don’t disregard your kid’s ideas, they know what your target market wants,” Mrs Rizzo said.

“I see it all the time. These kids have amazing ideas and parents just go ‘that’s cute’. You have to listen to them. They know the trends, they know the colours.

“I buy the colour and Sophia was like ‘Nobody is going to buy that’. She was right.

“The staff, when they come on board, quickly realise she’s the one making the decisions, the colours, the names.”

Although Sophia is now 13, she believes she is still very much in tune with her target audience.

“There’s still lots of people my age that buy it. Pretty much everyone, random people will buy it, people mum’s age, younger people, everyone,” she said.

Sophia is now in Year 8 and added that “A bunch of people kept coming up to me and asking me ‘Are you Glitter Girl?’”

She has been asked to do a presentation for her business studies class.

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