Coming to a park near you, the Bellevue Children’s Business Fair is returning this summer with all new vendors and sponsors. From the mind of Eastside Preparatory School sophomore, Aryaman Sinha, the fair is a perfect place for local children and teens to showcase their passion for entrepreneurship, marketing, and innovation by selling crafts, services, and inventions. However, this is only one of many projects Sinha has created over the past few years. “I have always been passionate about social initiatives and having an impact on my community. During quarantine, I would publish articles on a website I made to share good news with everyone during the challenging times,” Sinha remarked.

Since fifth grade, he has done his best to help his community and use his voice to encourage others to do the same. Whether it was volunteering at the nonprofit Dress for Success or making balloon animals at the park for kids, Sinha has always looked for outlets to demonstrate his care and learning.

Growing up in a family of business owners, it only made sense for him to pursue entrepreneurship as well. 

Consequently, the Bellevue Children’s Business Fair was formed in the summer before his eighth grade year, in 2023. In just the first year, Sinha hosted 50 kid business vendors with former Mayor Lynne Robinson coming by for a statement. “It was interesting because I was teaching these kids the basics of business while I was also learning it myself. The firsthand business experience I got from it was incredible and it served as a good lesson for the coming years as I scaled up the project,” he said.

To get the fair started, the first year was in partnership with an organization, but for the years after, the funding came from independent sponsorships. Therefore, the fair kept on growing.

In the second year, he scaled it up to 75 vendors, juggling more costs and raising more money for the scale. Additionally, he implemented a six-week “Intro to Business” course for the kids who signed up to sell at the fair, to help them learn about finance, pitching, and confidence so they could apply their learning to their businesses and elsewhere. Then, in the third year, it increased to 80. Over those three years, the kids made over $20,000 combined, with hundreds of attendees, and it has now become a community event that Bellevue looks forward to every year. This year, Sinha is looking to scale up the fair even more.

Advertising and outreach are also another aspect to Sinha’s job, especially because for the first three years, he was in the only major leadership position of the project. To find his first 50 vendors the first year, he posted on Facebook groups with parents in the King County area to share his event. Furthermore, he reached out to local elementary and middle schools and sent out pamphlets of the fair in their weekly newsletters.

A similar process is done for the sponsorships that fund the project. For Sinha, the first step is cold calling. “We operate on a sponsorship model in a way that we exchange visibility for donations, so it is a mutual exchange. Targeting small businesses in the Bellevue area is the most effective way to getting funding, especially those that are built on community building. It is more of a partnership than a transaction,” he highlights. Molly Moons, a local favorite ice cream parlor, is an example of one of the businesses he worked with using this model. The business fair was provided funding while Molly Moons delivered a closing keynote. 

In addition to contacting businesses and residents, Sinha’s business experience extends further to evaluating pitches. To decide on the vendors for the fair, he looks to see the star-quality of a good/service and the confidence of response in the application. “I have gotten to witness super dedicated kids show off their incredible innovation through this project. A family came from Oregon one time to set up a booth at the fair, which was fantastic to see,” he added.

The Bellevue Children’s Business Fair is returning to Bellevue Downtown Park on July 11th, with plans of expanding to three more locations in King County during that period. “I want to create an ecosystem for young entrepreneurs to learn within. I have always had the broader vision of expanding this project into online resources and even competitions because I want business to be accessible to everyone,” Sinha said. He believes that “taking the first step is always the hardest part of starting a project.” And that if someone wants to start a project as well, “they need to accept failure as a part of the process.”

For those looking to apply to be a vendor at the business fair, applications are due May 1st and vendors can apply by going to this website: bellevuecbf.com.