Inside the head of a college-age entrepreneurial savant
By Matthew Halverson
Photograph by Katherine Bish
In a couple of months Paul Scheiter will graduate from Saint Louis University without a job—but, then, he’s not looking for one. See, he’s been making and selling leather sheaths for knives under the Hedgehog Leatherworks name for a couple of years now, and last year he cracked $100,000 in sales. Then, in November, he finished second in the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (beating 298 other contestants from around the world). We’re thinking he’s going to be OK.
Peace of Mind: Mom and Dad get props for support and good rearing, but it was three college-age neighbors who taught a 12-year-old Scheiter the skill he relies on the most today: kung fu. It’s not what you think, though: “It’s about being able to move calmly within the storm,” he says. Sounds very Zen and the Art of Leatherworking. “I don’t know if it’s Zen,” he says, “but it’s something I’ve compiled in my own crazy way.”
Class Act: You might imagine that a guy who built a profitable business before graduating from college would have trouble finding the motivation to go to class. You’d be right. It’s not that he doesn’t try to get excited about it; it’s just that, well, he could be at home making money. “But even when I’ve had a class I didn’t particularly enjoy,” he admits, “the teachers have gone out of their way to help me.”
Brand New: After naming his company Wolverine Leatherworks and paying someone to create an appropriate logo, Scheiter caught wind of the fact that a certain boot manufacturer you may have heard of has a thing for suing similarly named companies. “I didn’t have any money to change the logo, so I had to come up with another animal that looked like it and change the letters,” he says with a laugh. For better or worse, it’s Hedgehog Leatherworks now.
Lone Ranger: At a time when most of his friends are prepping their résumés and perfecting their answers to questions like “What are your long-term career objectives?” Scheiter’s getting ready to go it alone. “I’m kind of an all-chips-in personality,” he says of his decision to shun cubicle life. “Sometimes it works for me, and sometimes it doesn’t—but, yeah, it would be nice to have a consistent paycheck. And insurance. And benefits.”
Patriot Gains: The unpredictability of the job is enough to discourage Scheiter from time to time, but every once in a while something—like the e-mail from a U.S. soldier in Iraq who used a knife he stored in a Hedgehog case to cut a fellow soldier loose from a damaged Humvee—gets him going again. “That was a big turning point,” he says. “I was, like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this. I’m going to be an entrepreneur.’”
Late Great: You can take the kid out of college (and put him in an international entrepreneur competition), but you can’t take the college out of the kid: Scheiter had six months to prepare his reports for the GSEA competition, but he ended up doing almost all of them the night before they were due. “It was midterms week, and I was up until 2 in the morning,” he says. “It was a nightmare.”
