Not sure if we can remember what we were doing at the age of 14, but I know it wasn’t inventing a first-aid vending machine.
As part of an 8th grade project for Young Entrepreneurs Academy class, Taylor Rosenthal had the idea of making first aid supplies available at places of high traffic where people could possibly get hurt, like school baseball stadiums, amusement parks, etc.
“[RecMed] originally started out as a pop up shop for first-aid kits, where we would go and sit out at sporting events to sell first-aid kits. So instead of a mom having to go to a Wal-Mart or a CVS to get first aid supplies when their kid gets hurt at a sporting event, we’d be sitting out there and it would be fast, easy access. We noticed how much it would cost to pay somebody minimum wage to sit out at a sporting event for six hours, and we were trying to find a way that we could get the first aid supplies out there but not really have to pay somebody, so we kind of thought vending machines.”
Rosenthal has been doing well and has received a patent for RecMed last October and continues to develop the company at Round House, a startup incubator in Opelika, Alabama. He has already received $100,000 in angel investments, an order of 100 machines from Six Flags and a $30 million buyout from another company that he rejected.
