The interior of Wireless Express L.L.C. doesn’t immediately look impressive - boasting only a brown adobe pot, a couch, a couple of rows of cellular accessories and few small display cases.
But behind the checkout desk - complete with a set of barstools - Navid Ghavami makes a living.
The 18-year-old Okemos High School graduate owns and manages the store, 109 E. Grand River Ave., which specializes in cellular phones and accessories.
Ghavami has owned the store since September, but has sold phones since his junior year in high school - only two years ago.
“I started with wholesale - buying 2, 5, 10 phones,” he said. “It slowly grew up to 50 or 100.”
Since then, business has continued to grow.
Ghavami already has plans to open another store in Okemos and has been talking with friends in Auburn Hills to open one there.
The store has also added a delivery service where customers can order accessories over the Internet to be delivered to their house or office. Ghavami said the store’s position on Grand River Avenue has helped facilitate business, but his prices are the biggest cause.
“Because of the wholesale connection, I’m able to bypass two levels of the pyramid,” he said.
Despite the company’s success, Ghavami said in the future he would like to back away from the business and pursue a law degree, possibly at Cooley Law School.
Ghavami said the switch would come as soon as he’s happy with the size of the business.
“There’s also been the idea of a carwash like Showroom Shine,” he said.
Ghavami said so far he doesn’t feel his age is hurting his business, but sometimes he enjoys the ironies of it.
“It’s funny how I could generate $30,000 revenue in one month and I only get approved for a credit card with a $500 limit,” he said.
Other youth-run businesses have not run into the same success as Wireless Express, said Jim van Ravensway, East Lansing director of planning and community development.
Van Ravensway said the city often sees the creation of student-run businesses because of the proximity to MSU, but the businesses sometimes experience more turnover from both graduation and moving away from the city, as well as not having enough money to maintain a store.
“Some of them do (survive) and they go on forever,” he said. “They have the dream of running their own business and they actually have the guts to survive.”
Tom Scott, spokesman for Michigan Retailers Association, said often young owners don’t survive simply because of their new position in the community.
“You don’t necessarily have the relationships with vendors,” he said.
But Scott said Ghavami’s lack of knowledge about drawbacks might work out in his favor.
“For the relatively inexperienced person, what they have going for them is they don’t always know all the hurdles,” he said.
