Gallery of Mirrors

The inception of the “Gallery of Mirrors” came through the Prince Salman Science Oasis TREPS program in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
TREPS, winner of the New Jersey PTA's Champion for Children Award, teaches kids in grades 4-8, the basics of business ownership. Through a series of engaging Workshops, the classroom or afterschool program takes on a professional environment as students are exposed to topics like product development, finance, marketing, advertising, and sales. But it’s the TREP$ Marketplace that defines this program, giving the children the memory of a lifetime: the night they launched their first business. It is a word derived from the word enTREPreneurs.
We enrolled our eldest son, Ahmed (aged 10) in this program in March 2012 so that at an early age he could learn and understand on how to start his own business.
The first idea that came in Ahmed’s mind was to make wooden tables and chairs. We had to drop this idea as it was not feasible financially. Another idea that we looked into was lotions and soaps as I found a recipe on the internet. Even though the lotion turned out very well but the process was very tedious as the raw materials were not easily available.
Finally one day, as we were pondering on different business ideas, I found a small greeting hand painted mirror given to me as a school farewell gift from one of my best friends. Upon seeing this, Ahmed and I instantly agreed “We should make HAND PAINTED MIRRORS and present this at the TREPS Marketplace”.
We bought 3 mirrors, painted some exquisite greeting designs and the results were wonderful. So we started designing and painting the Mirrors for the Marketplace. The 12th TREP$ Marketplace was held at Sahara Mall on March 22, 2012. There were about 20 students displaying their own products – some of the notable ones were self designed T-Shirts, delicious cupcakes, Home Designed Islamic Calendars.
We received many visitors on our stall as they were interested to see colorful and beautiful mirrors of exquisite designs. The mirrors had personalized greetings such as Islamic art and calligraphy, friendship, and also special greetings to show love for mothers.
There were two TV channels (Arabic and English) covering the TREP$ event and were taking interviews of the participating kids. Ahmed was very excited in telling about the idea behind “Gallery of Mirrors” and how it started from a painted mirror given as a gift by one of his mother’s childhood friends.
At the end of the show there was an award ceremony and to our amazement, “Gallery of Mirrors” received Best Business Idea Certificate and achieved the FIRST prize at the 12th TREP$ marketplace. We are very thankful to Allah for bestowing this award and it was due to the tremendous efforts and hard work that we as a family put-forth, Alhumdulillah.
This is our little story on how we as a family got introduced to entrepreneurship and how we started our own very first business “GALLERY OF MIRRORS”.