When I was 11, my days were spent lazing around the playground, dreaming about boy bands and playing with my Polly Pockets. Delilah Dinaburg is spending her elementary years slightly different. Delilah is perhaps the youngest entrepreneur you will ever meet. She stands in her workroom, the converted game room, with her neon orange nails squeezing a ball of lime green slime, talking me through a day in the life of a professional slime maker and business owner.
Oozing confidence, she walks me through her laboratory, telling me about the art of slime. The room is filled with neatly stacked, colorful jars of the sticky substance. An electric mixer sits on the corner, the latest investment. Bins of glitter, vials of coloring and a shelf of scents like cinnamon and chocolate are all neat and tidy, pushed against the bright pink walls of the small room.
(Photo courtesy of Elena Dinaburg.)
Any mother of a 10-year-old may know that slime is a craze that has hit elementary and middle schools hard. Slime has garnered more than 25.4 billion YouTube views this year, so if you are wondering what it is your kids are watching, we have found it. Seeing a market and a trend that wasn’t going anywhere, Delilah wanted to get to work. She recalls the fateful dinner at Olive Garden, where she explained the “gooey stuff” to her mom. Her mother, Elena Dinaburg, was willing to put forth the first investment — but only if her Instagram account garnered 100 followers.
“Honestly, I never thought it would happen” Elena said.
In less than a week, Delilah had her followers and the plans for a business.
Nearly a year after opening the Etsy shop, DESlimeMadness has more than 17,000 Instagram followers. The team gets up to 10 orders a day, and before Christmas, the girls were filling out about 40 orders a day. Orders come from as close as Plano and as far away as Australia.
Delilah’s business savvy is a force to be reckoned with. The 11-year-old already has big plans for her business’ future. She wants to get more orders, ship more product internationally and get some assistants. (Apparently, her younger sister is just not cutting it.) She also hopes that if business is still popping, she can open a store front.
She is also a marketing genius, with some Instagram posts garnering more than 10,000 views. Her feed is full of her signature nails crunching and squeezing her homemade slime. In the caption, she asks a “Question of the Day.” Comments on her posts are a flood of fellow kids tagging their celebrity crush or requesting new scents.
(Photo courtesy of Elena Dinaburg.)
As Delilah talks me through the variations of slime, her hands swing a ball of goo from side to side. Her personal favorite scent is mango sherbet, a delightfully sweet scent that is reminiscent of summer.
The secret to making slime is all about love, Delilah says. She wants all her customers to be pleased with every order, and her Etsy comments are filled with positive responses.
But Delilah’s fans are not solely online. Beyond the screen, Delilah has fans and friends that meet her at slime conventions. Her next one is the Slime Rodeo in Dallas at the end of July. Delilah is excited to see where her business will go, and her mother is also excited, as the profits from the business are saved for Delilah’s college fund.
You can follow them on Instagram (@deslimemadness) for fun posts about new products, as well as oddly satisfying clips of squeezing slime!
