Tyla-Simone Crayton's product is already in more than 65 stores.
... She’s selling on Amazon and has reached $8,000 a month so far.
... She’s a homeschooler maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
... She just won at $100,000 investment on Shark Tank, and will be working with Kendra Scott.
... Oh, yes, and Tyla-Simone Crayton is 17 years old.
Know how we talk about owning a problem, creating a solution, and serving people being the secret sauce of any successful business? Tyla-Simone took that literally.
When her favorite wings restaurant closed up shop in New York, the took ownership of the new problem its patrons now faced. No longer could they please their palates with their favorite tangy, sweet, and spicy sauce. Most of them resigned themselves to settling for poor substitutes from the grocery store.
Not this enterprising young woman. She replicated the flavor and served it up to her mom’s friends who’d come over for a Girls Night Out at their apartment. The crowd went wild. Then, Tyla-Simone realized she had a slight problem: she forgot what she’d put in it! For round two, she paid more attention to the recipe.
Mom had had a stroke and suggested a tweak to the recipe to make it gluten-free and high-fructose corn syrup-free. After all, 45 million Americans report being on diets at any given moment.
A year later, Tyla-Simone and her mom moved to Houston, Texas to go all-in on the brand. They hand-bottled for the first couple of months, waking up early on Sundays to make the sauce, using a funnel to pour it into bottles and using a heat gun to seal them. They soon went looking for a co-packer to produce and bottle it.
Now, if you walk into the condiment aisle of certain grocery stores, you can find this tasty sauce on the shelves. Tyla-Simone’s had the surreal experience of seeing shoppers reach for a bottle, read the label, and add a bottle or two to their carts.
Great Press Is Well-Deserved
Tyla-Simone Crayton is super-poised and has been featured on several newscasts, radio stations, and “Good Morning America” as well as “Strahan, Sara and Keke” and the “Pickler & Ben Show” out of Nashville, where she won $25K in their pitch competition. She also sought investors on Republic.co (https://republic.co/sienna-sauce) and raised nearly $200K, 789% of her funding goal.
Not only is this teenager learning all she can about how to do business - and how to have the mindset of success - she’s got a good heart, too. One of her goals is to “build a legacy” for her family. But it’s not all about her. She’s also started an entrepreneurial program for youth. They can sell her sauce and make 40% of the profits. She’ll help them learn what she’s learned, too.
What’s Next for Tyla-Simone Crayton?
Tyla-Simone has new products up her sleeve and is working hard to get into more stores all over the country. She and her mom are building a team to help with the work involved in running a growing brand. College may or may not be her next best move; she’s applying and keeping her options open.They reinvest everything back into the business, and as Tyla-Simone says, “Every single bottle counts.”
So, we had to ask: “Do you still like the sauce or are you over it now after having worked so hard and so long on it?” She puts it on everything, every day! (We’ll vouch - having bought a trio of her sauces… this sauce is so tasty you could put it on a shoe, lick every drop, and still want more!)
See for yourself by visiting her online store, SiennaSauce.com.
Tyla-Simone, Mikaila Ulmer, Ryan Kaji, Charli D'Amelio are just a few young entrepreneurs we're rooting for here at Capitalism.com. There's nothing more exciting than watching the next generation of world-changing capitalists as they grow!
