While most sixth graders spend their free time watching movies or playing video games, Mo Bridges runs a business making and selling stylish bow ties.
The precocious 11-year-old from Memphis, Tennessee, is the CEO of Mo’s Bows, a handmade bow tie company that he launched in 2011.
Looking dapper in a beige suit, a plaid bow tie and tortoiseshell glasses, Mo told the Today Show: ‘Bow ties, they make me look good and feel good and they just give me that spark inside of me.’
Eloquent and confident, he added: ‘I am the NBT, the Next Best Thing.’
Mo explains that he first became interested in bow ties when he was three and his mother Tramica started letting him dress how he wanted to dress.
‘I would wear ties just to ride my bike and I would also wear ties just to play in the playground,’ he says.
His grandmother, a seamstress, taught him how to sew, and he began handmaking his bow ties. Soon thereafter, a business was born.
His bow ties – which range in price from $25 to $60 – come in a variety of colorful patterns, and each one is given a playful name.
A camouflage colored design, for instance, is called G I Mo, and a rainbow chevron-patterned tie is named Laugh Out Loud.
He finds inspiration at local fabric stores, where he hand-picks all of the fabrics himself.
‘We say Mo is the CEO of Mo’s bows – but Momma is the CEO of Mo’
While Mo is the brains and creative mind behind the company, his mother Tramica calls herself his ‘momager’ and explains that it is a family business.
‘Between myself, my mom, my sisters and granny, and of course Mo, we have been doing it since 2011,’ she explains.
Mo – who has plans to go to Parsons School of Design when he’s older – agrees that the business is a team effort. ‘We say Mo is the CEO of Mo’s Bows,’ he says, ‘but Momma is the CEO of Mo.’
Today, Mo’s Bows can be purchased in retail stores in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Arkansas, as well as online on his Etsy page.
