Metro Roundup: Ramsay High student responds to COVID-19 with his own business

Jaiden Smith is a senior honors student at Ramsay High School with a passion for business and a desire to serve the community.

Those motivations came together for Smith this spring in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when he started a business called the Quarantine Essentials Shop.

He got the idea after seeing people struggle to find the necessities they needed to keep their families safe during the pandemic.

Smith locates hand sanitizers, disinfectant spray and other cleaning products and sells them online.

“I’m helping others and getting paid to do something that I enjoy so I couldn’t be happier at how well the system is working,” Smith told Iron City Ink.

Through his online shop, Smith said he’s able to save shoppers time and hassle in locating hard-to-find products.

“I don’t know many people who are able to get up and go to the store at the times you have to go to find the products that you can find on my site,” he said. “It’s impractical for working adults to go to eight different stores three times a day. It’s almost unfair the way the shipments and delivery schedules are set up. But since this is my job, I can get to the stores at all the right times and put them on my site for others who can’t find them.”

Smith has faced some challenges. “As my business grows, it’s getting harder and harder to keep things in stock,” he said.

But it’s all worth it, Smith said. “I get to help a lot of people stay safe during this trying time,” he said.

One of Smith’s customers was in a house where three people tested positive for the virus but were unable to find any disinfectant spray.

“I was able to supply them with this item, which helped to alleviate some of their worries while battling the virus,” he said.

Smith has written down business ideas in a notebook since he was about 10 years old, but his online shop is the first to come to fruition.

“This is my first company that I have launched, and because of that it means a lot to me,” he said on his website.

For more about Smith and his business, go to quarantineessentialsshop.com.