Game On

To hear Sam Vrinios talk about the origins his business, it sounds like he's a veteran serial entrepreneur.

“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” says Vrinios. “I was always doing things as a kid to make money. I like being able to say I own my business.”

Yet Vrinios is far from a polished businessman. In fact, Vrinios is 15 years old — not even old enough to have a full driver's license. He just completed his freshman year at Lakewood Ranch High School in east Manatee County, where he has a 4.0 grade point average and is a running back on the football team.

But the success of the business, Imagine Customs, which retrofits and customizes Xbox 360 game controllers, defies his age. The sales figures, $260,000 in 2011 and $220,000 this year through May, certainly puts teenage staples like lawn-mowing and babysitting to shame.

Vrinios moved Imagine Customs from his parent's garage to a storefront in a Lakewood Ranch shopping plaza last year. Plus, he recently opened a retail component to what was previously an online-only business.

Vrinios' father, Pete Vrinios, home-schooled the teenager through this past year, before public high school. Sam Vrinios' mother, Jaime Vrinios, is a national sales director with Mary Kay. “He grew up with no fear to becoming the best he could be,” Pete Vrinios says. “I would never, ever tell him he can't do something.”

Imagine Customs was founded early last year, when Sam Vrinios saw a YouTube video of someone who had personalized an Xbox controller.

Vrinios spent hours that night trying to do the same thing with his controller. The paint chipped off the first few times, but he kept going. “I didn't have any idea I was going to start my own business or anything,” says Vrinios, who was born in Champaign, Ill., and moved with his family to Florida in 2003. “It was just kind of fun.”

But fun grew into sales. Vrinios researched what kinds of paints and color schemes to use that wouldn't damage the controllers. He also learned how to change some of the internal components, to spruce up the controllers even further.

Vrinios launched a website, www.imaginecontrollers.com, in early 2011. He also opened a Twitter account — which had 7,903 followers as of June 1. Prices for the retrofitted controllers range from $100 to $300, depending on the intricacy of the work. Customers can either send Vrinios their own controllers, or, for a heftier price, Imagine Customs will sell an in-house rebuilt controller.

Vrinios made a few thousand dollars in his first month, and he used the proceeds to buy a plodding machine he read about online. The machine cost $2,500. It allows Vrinios to make precision cuts and grooves on the controllers.

Imagine Customs has customers in the U.S. and abroad, from Hawaii to Spain. The company has seven part-time employees, three who fulfill orders and four who mange the website and help with customer service.

Vrinios is confident he can keep up his hectic pace with school, football and the company. He's already talking about opening more stores someday, and maybe even franchising the concept. “I hope I'm going to make $1 million before I'm 16,” says Vrinios, which happens Jan. 31. “I want to make this something huge and really big.”