Jewelry exec is 7 and very GQ
\nChicago Tribune, United States<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He has a press secretary (it’s his mom), and, oh yes, he gives away all the profits.<\/p>\n
By Emily Nunn | Tribune staff reporter
\nJuly 24, 2007<\/p>\n
As president and founder of the Chicago-based Ian’s Bead Co., Ian Danger Cahr believes it’s essential to the image of his business — whose products were recently showcased on “The Martha Stewart Show” and featured in trunk shows at the upscale natural beauty store Kiehl’s — that his male employees wear a suit and tie, at least until it becomes absolutely unbearable.<\/p>\n
On a recent afternoon at his favorite restaurant, Hot Doug’s, the popular North Side hot dog stand, he turned to his press secretary and asked, “Can I take my jacket off?”<\/p>\n
Cahr was svelte in a plaid suit, purple striped tie and French cuffs, accented by a tasteful amount of hair gel in his neatly cut mane.<\/p>\n
“Not until you get your picture taken,” said his press secretary, who laughs at practically everything he says and who also is his mother, Jill Cahr — embarrassing perhaps, but also convenient, because she can drive a car.<\/p>\n
“And don’t spill,” she added.<\/p>\n
Cahr has a lot of personal rules and goals for success for someone his age — which is 7 — but not in a Master of the Universe, greed-is-good way. All the proceeds from his nascent jewelry business, which he conceptualized almost a year ago during a playdate with his friend Miles Burke, 7, go to a local dog-rescue organization, New Leash on Life (NLOL), which has since received around $5,000 from the company.<\/p>\n
As privileged city kids go, Cahr seems to be the perfectly normal, charming, well-spoken, precocious version. He loves Harry Potter, roller coasters, hot dogs, the White Sox, “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings,” reading, playing soccer and baseball, penguins and, obviously, making crafts. His parents, both of whom are attorneys and involved in charity work, are the fun kind — pop-culture freaks who gave him the middle name Danger (“We named him after Austin Powers; in the first movie, after he is thawed, he says ‘Danger is my middle name,'” explained his press secretary\/mother), and who recently took him to the Star Wars convention in Los Angeles (“My husband Darren was Hans Solo, I was Princes Leia, and Ian was Luke from [episode] six,” she added.) He also has season passes to Six Flags Great America.<\/p>\n
And if you say to him, “You’re a lucky kid,” he responds, yelling over his own blissful laughter: “I know I am!”<\/p>\n
But his simple moral code is what makes him stand out. “You need to help other animals and other people to make the world a better place,” he said, explaining why he decided to start his company.<\/p>\n
So when his playmate Burke suggested they start selling things one day after camp, it seemed entirely natural to Cahr to attach a money stream to both his creativity and his ethical concerns.<\/p>\n
“I was thinking about charity, but my friend wasn’t,” Cahr said, when asked to retrace the evolution of a seminal bauble, a pipe-cleaner-and-pony-bead key chain, into his present line.<\/p>\n
“Ian,” his press secretary said, laughing.<\/p>\n
“He was thinking about it a little bit,” Cahr said, somewhat apologetically. He was eating a Chicago-style dog, grilled, with no tomatoes and no hot peppers, his usual, and a side of duck-fat fries, which he inserted one by one into the side of his mouth while talking. He slung his tie over one shoulder, to keep it clean.<\/p>\n
“But he wanted to keep the money,” Cahr added. “We agreed we could do whatever we wanted with our own half. I donated mine; he kept his.”<\/p>\n
“No,” his press secretary said, coaxing. “You ended up donating all of it.”<\/p>\n
“We ended up donating all of it,” he said, finally.<\/p>\n
Kiehl’s, which sponsors regular pet-adoption events at its Lincoln Park outlet, put him on the map in Chicago after a couple of the local managers got wind of Cahr’s charitable efforts during an animal-shelter fundraising committee meeting at the Cahr home. According to his press secretary, while showing off his pony-bead key chain during a tour of his bedroom, he was promptly invited to have an in-store trunk show (which in December and February netted $300 and $464 respectively). But it was Martha Stewart’s plug in May that gave him nationwide exposure.<\/p>\n
She read his letter on her show, then interviewed him on the air by phone. That produced a real income spike, Cahr pointed out. Stewart gave Ian’s Bead Co. $1,000, which Kiehl’s matched, and the company took in $1,283 at the sale three days after Martha’s mention.<\/p>\n
Today Cahr and his CEO (chief earring officer), Charlie Moss, 7, have expanded the collection into an unrestrained miscellany of bead necklaces ($8-$20); dangly earrings ($4-$5 — these are particularly popular with the 7-year-old set); barrettes that have googly doll eyes, rhinestones or beads glued to them ($1); eyeglass chains ($4-$5); child-drawn seasonal notecards (a best seller at $5); and tissue-paper flowers ($1 each or by the bunch in a handpainted glass vase for $5-$7).<\/p>\n
Cahr delegates work to more than 20 schoolchildren, who toil at crafts parties in the Cahr household kitchen with a couple of other moms, using donated supplies. (“At first I bought everything,” his press secretary said. “It was my donation to the charity.”)<\/p>\n
It’s a lot of responsibility, so there have to be some rules, such as: Unless you helped make the jewelry, you can’t participate in the trunk shows — which are the most fun part — and you have to dress professionally (“That’s the only thing I require at the sale. The rest — you have to wear nice shoes — you’re fine.”). Also: No checks or credit cards will be accepted. (“Cash only — just cash, my friend,” Cahr says, a motto he learned directly from Hot Doug’s proprietor, Doug Sohn.)<\/p>\n
“Tell her about my favorite thing to do,” he said to his press secretary.<\/p>\n
“No, you’re being interviewed. You tell her,” she replied.<\/p>\n
“I also don’t like to give change,” Cahr said. “Somebody gave me $20 for a $2 thing, and I just looked at them like … ”<\/p>\n
“It’s for charity,” said his press secretary. “So he made a lot of extra money not giving change by giving them the cute kid look.”<\/p>\n
Cahr demonstrated: Eyebrows up, pleading smile, but very subtle.<\/p>\n
And just how often does that work?<\/p>\n
“All the time!” he said, surprised anyone would have to ask.<\/p>\n
As the lunch began to wind down, Cahr slung his arm around his press secretary’s neck, put his head on her shoulder, and reflected on his future. “I might turn this into a real business,” he said. “Where I don’t send all the profits to charity, like this is what I do for a living.” He added that he still plans to pursue philanthropic outlets when he grows up, of course.<\/p>\n
For the very near future, his biggest dream is that someone will adopt a dog named Radar from the NLOL shelter (newleash.org\/chicago), where the canine has been living for quite some time. (“He’s just really cute, and he needs a home. And he has — his ears are really big.”) And that he’ll get Martha Stewart’s autograph when he travels to New York City this fall to see the show in person. And that he makes a lot of money for the shelter at his next Chicago trunk show, at Kiehl’s, on Dec. 8.<\/p>\n
Walking out to his press secretary’s car, he stopped to pat a dog named Thurman, owned by some customers waiting on the sidewalk to get into Hot Doug’s.<\/p>\n
“I feel very fortunate,” said his press secretary, as Cahr ran down the street and stood at the car door.<\/p>\n
“He really has internalized that you have to give money back.”<\/p>\n
“Mom!” Cahr yelled.<\/p>\n
“I just hope he hasn’t peaked at 7,” she said, and then cracked up.<\/p>\n
———–<\/p>\n
ernunn@tribune.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jewelry exec is 7 and very GQ Chicago Tribune, United States He has a press secretary (it’s his mom), and, oh yes, he gives away all the profits. By Emily Nunn | Tribune staff reporter July 24, 2007 As president and founder of the Chicago-based Ian’s Bead Co., Ian Danger Cahr believes it’s essential to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[411],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n