Alaska Business Week nurtures leaders, entrepreneurs: intensive residential camp introduces high school students to business basics.

• Author: Resz, Heather A.
• Position: WORKFORCE TRAINING

Sometimes a yard sale is just a yard sale and sometimes it launches a new business. The latter is true for Bethel's Kate McWilliams.

She was still a student at Bethel High School when a family garage sale in 2014 sparked the idea to open a consignment business, called Arctic Belle Boutique. While organizing clothing displays for her family's yard sale, she said she realized there was an opportunity to create a clothing exchange system in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta.

With a $3,000 grant from a local entrepreneurship competition called "Best in the West," she began collecting inventory and cleaning and renovating her stepdad's wood shop in preparation to open her shop that fall.

"When word spread that I would be taking used clothing, bags started showing up at our doorstep," McWilliams says.

Serendipity led her to Alaska Business Week while she was attending another program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in summer 2014, she says. Since she planned to open her store in November 2014, McWilliams says she thought the program would be a good way to learn more about the business world in general.

"It helped me gain the confidence to start up my boutique," McWilliams says, now a freshman at Pomona College in Southern California. "I would definitely recommend this program to anyone with an interest in business."

While she is away at college, some friends from high school work with her to open the consignment shop on weekend afternoons.

"At times, it is difficult managing the store from thousands of miles away," McWilliams says. "I realized that because I love my business so much, I'm willing to put in all my extra time and effort. But I can't expect that from paid employees."

She says she's been surprised by the community's support for her business, even in her absence.

"I still have loyal customers and good business," she says. "It has been a huge success so far."

From the river to the runway, Arctic Belle Boutique helps re-home clean, lightly-worn, in-season women's clothing, footwear, jewelry, bags, hats, mittens, scarves, and hair accessories. And the boutique also sells handicraft items, some made by local artists and some from as far away as Sweden, McWilliams says.

"The boutique has created a unique community and serves a niche in Bethel that didn't exist before," she says.

Tools to Succeed

Since the Alaska Chamber of Commerce launched Alaska Business Week in 2010, 320 high school students have completed the week-long introduction to the...