Jordean world’s youngest CEO

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At an age when kids are busy playing computer games, eight-year-old Harli Jordean runs a successful Internet business from his Stoke Newington home in London.

The British schoolboy turned his love of marbles into a specialist business for marbles and set up www.marbleking.co.uk [2] two years ago when he was just six. His mother Tina and his older brothers help him with the business.

The products on Harli’s website range from a tub of marbles selling for £7.99 and to limited edition Duke of York solitaire tables, selling for £599.

His mother helped him set up the website, but he’s actively involved in the business. “Harli has a hand in everything. He picks out stock at the suppliers and when orders come in he handles it all, packing, sending - everything. All I do is the accounts and try and reel in his overenthusiastic ideas,” Tina said.

It was his obsession with marbles that made him think of starting his marbles business. “I love marbles and I love having my own marbles company,” the young schoolboy said. “My friends love that I have my own business. At first some of them didn’t believe me — but they do now. They are some of my best customers.”

His mother started calling him Marble King over his obsession with marbles and it was this name that was used for the Internet business. “You should be known as ‘marble king of Britain’ as you are just manic about marbles,” his mother told him.

Harli, who is planning to set a new world record by making “biggest, bestest, roundish, and largest inscribed marble in the world,” aims to become a marble tycoon when he grows up. “His future destiny is eventually to become an active co-owner,” is how his website describes it.

“My dream is to have a chain of stores like Hamleys — it will be one of the biggest toy stores in the world but selling all sorts of marbles,” he said.