The scholarship Ethan Eriksen won for the winter-apparel brand he started back in 2024.
A lot of student businesses start as a class assignment and quietly disappear when the semester ends. Ethan Eriksen, from Barron, Wisconsin, refused to let his be one of them. He started Shrederz Attire, a winter apparel brand, in 2024, and kept building it after the grade was in.
He treated it like a company, not a project. Instead of shelving the idea, Eriksen kept designing, selling, and running Shrederz Attire as a real winter-wear label, learning the unglamorous parts of a business while most of his classmates moved on to the next assignment.
It paid off in front of the whole state. Eriksen won the 2026 Junior Achievement Young Entrepreneur competition and a 5,000 dollar scholarship, beating out a field of other young founders for the top spot.
"Most class projects end at the grade. He kept building his into a real company."
The difference between a school project and a business is almost never the idea. It is whether you keep going after the assignment is over. Eriksen kept going, and that persistence is exactly what turned a classroom concept into an award-winning brand.
This is the founder discipline ANF keeps spotlighting. Do not let the thing you built die when the deadline passes. Keep shipping it until it becomes real.
The class ended. The company did not.