Jackson Brady is a young businessman who loves fishing and building with Legos.
A year and a half ago, the 9-year-old De Soto boy combined the two passions to start Lures for Lego Bricks, selling fishing lures at Madd Heifer boutique, 215 E. Main St., in De Soto and twice a month at the De Soto Farmers Market, 520 N. Main St. (open late April through October).
“I was starting to want the bigger Lego sets, so I needed a way to earn more money,” said Jackson, a fourth grader at De Soto Intermediate School. He is the son of Emily and Patrick Brady.
Jackson and his dad found some online videos on how to make their own fishing lures. His dad figured it out and taught Jackson, who then taught his mom.
“I came home, and (Patrick’s) like, ‘Look what Jackson made,’” Emily said.
They order the components from different online lure parts stores.
“You can buy all the components and then assemble them yourself, pick your colors and paint and decorate,” she said. “He coordinates everything. He picks the colors. He sometimes does creative things like – he likes the Avengers – so sometimes he’ll do like an Iron Man (gold and red), Captain America (red, white and blue).”
Jackson added, “I’ve made a spinnerbait which had a green head, and then I put a purple and green skirt on it for the Hulk.”
If Jackson is selling at De Soto Farmers Market that weekend, Jackson and his parents will spend three or four nights the week before “building up inventory.”
“We spend like two hours downstairs watching TV while we make lures at night,” Jackson said. “It depends on the bait, but sometimes we do like 15-20 a night. We make spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, jigs, crankbaits. We airbrush crankbaits and chatterbaits and for the smaller fish, we do inline spinnerbaits.”
Jackson said he enjoys the assembly process but said his favorite part is interacting with customers.
“He does great at that,” Emily said. “And he’ll give you advice if you don’t know what to pick or what to fish with.”
Jackson added, “Like what the best colors are – it’s chartreuse and white and the second best color is purple and white.”
Emily said he gets a lot of booth visitors who just like to tell stories about their biggest fish or their favorite place to fish.
“He meets a lot of interesting people,” she said. “He even had a customer who can’t fish anymore give him some vintage fishing lures, just to share his passion.”
Jackson said the family prefers to catch white bass, and they enjoy fishing at Lake of the Ozarks and Lake Briarwood, which is just outside of De Soto. They fish about every other weekend and some weeknights.
“He’s been fishing since he was old enough to hold a fishing pole,” Emily said. “I mean he was probably like 1, maybe a little bit older. We started out trout fishing, and it’s expanded.”
His love of Legos started slightly after that.
“He’s got a creative mind,” Emily said. “He likes to build and craft and construct.”
“Yeah, I just like any building and any crafting – it doesn’t really matter what it is,” said Jackson, whose favorite subjects in school are art and science.
When asked how many Legos he owns, Jackson smiled and said, “millions.”
“I mean, if you counted individual Lego blocks, you’d probably have thousands,” Emily assured him. “(Millions is) what you are dreaming of. He asks for Legos for every holiday, every special occasion, and then he buys his own, and sometimes he trades minifigs."
“A minifig is like a little Lego person that comes in the set,” Jackson said. “Sometimes, they’re double-headed. And they come with like hair pieces, helmets, different printings on the shirt. Their arms can move; their hands can move; their legs can move back and forth.”
Jackson gets 25 percent of the profits of the business, and the rest is reinvested into the business to buy supplies. He said he has made enough to buy Legos.
After more than a year, Jackson has shown he really enjoys the business, Emily said.
“So we are going to try to take it a little bit further and have a social media and maybe figure out how to take orders and ship them,” she said. “We’re just not there yet but if we had people reaching out, then we would make that happen.”
For now, customers can email Jackson through Emily at jackson@yourbradybunch.com or call 314-604-4746. On Wednesdays, the De Soto Farmers Market Facebook page typically posts a vendor list for the upcoming market.