MORAGA, Calif. -- A 13-year-old California boy has agreed to sell the toy company he founded in 1996 for several million dollars -- and all he wants out of the deal is a new surfboard.
The Contra Costa Times reported Friday that teen tycoon Richie Stachowski recently skipped a seventh-grade history class so he and his parents could sign papers selling his company, Short Stack, to Wild Planet Toys of San Francisco."Richie has big dreams and he could not take the company as far as he wanted on his own," Richie's mother and business adviser Barbara Stachowski told the newspaper.
Specific terms of the deal between the two privately held companies are under wraps, and the sale is not expected to be formally announced until next week at the New York Toy Fair. Officials at both companies could not be reached for comment Friday.
The Times reported that Stachowski stood to make "several million dollars" from the sale.
The youngster started Short Stack three years ago to manufacture an invention he called "Water Talkies." The device, which allows swimmers to communicate underwater, was a quick success with major retailers.
Richie subsequently invented a number of other water toys that also became big sellers. Altogether, Short Stack's six different toys will have sold more than a million units by the end of 1999, the Times said.
But Stachowski earned a mere weekly wage/allowance of $5.
Now that he is selling his company, he plans to fulfill a promise he made to his parents when he founded it: He will put all but $350 of the proceeds from the sale into a trust fund that he will not touch until he turns 35.
With the money that he does pocket, Stachowski plans to buy a surfboard, the newspaper reported. The young entrepreneur can already surf standing on his head.
Wild Planet, meanwhile, plans to retain Stachowski as a free-lance toy designer and will have first refusal on any new water toys that he develops.
And Stachowski said he might launch a new company concentrating on toys outside his current swimming-pool niche. But he admitted to some mixed emotions as he says goodbye to Short Stack.