{"id":19122,"date":"2018-06-14T12:27:09","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=19122"},"modified":"2018-06-14T12:27:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:27:09","slug":"broder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/broder\/","title":{"rendered":"Fair Winds and Following Kites: Phil Broder '90"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cWhen the education career<\/span> came to a sudden end, I was kind of looking around like, \u2018OK, what do I do now?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Phil Broder worked in environmental education for 25 years before his career path suddenly changed, and he found himself starting his own kite-making supply business.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a student at Clemson, Broder studied wildlife and fisheries biology with \u201ca grand plan to become the president of the National Wildlife Federation.\u201d While that dream didn\u2019t quite pan out, Broder enjoyed serving as the first nature instructor at Clemson\u2019s outdoor lab after graduation and moved on to work in a nature center outside of Chicago, where Broder\u2019s career would take a wild turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was literally driving to the mall one day and drove past this kite festival,\u201d Broder says. \u201cI thought, \u2018Huh. That looks cool.\u2019 And I stopped to talk to some people, and found out that this kite shop had just opened up the street from my house. That was $100,000 ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Broder\u2019s newfound interest in kites soon blossomed into professional purpose when America\u2019s biggest kite-making supplier closed. \u201cThere was a niche in the market, so I moved to fill it,\u201d he explains. And so around four years ago, his online business, Fly Market Kitemaking Supply, was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

While currently based in Lewisberry, Pa., Broder travels on a regular basis to show off the kites he crafts in events and competitions all over the world: \u201cBesides kite festivals all around America \u2014 including the EPCOT Festival of Kites in Orlando to Kites on Ice on a frozen lake in Wisconsin \u2014 I\u2019ve been to England, France, China, India, South Africa, Poland, Portugal and Canada.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Becoming a kite-making supplier and award-winning kite maker was never in the plan for Broder, but he\u2019s grateful for finding his passion and sharing it with his clients. \u201cOne of my customers sent me an email the other day of all the kites that he\u2019s built with my supplies. As a business owner, that\u2019s really cool. People are taking this stuff from me, and they\u2019re making it into something beautiful.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Broder, the future looks bright. Recently married, he\u2019s planning on taking a trip next fall to one of his favorite destinations: Cape Town, South Africa. \u201cThere just happen to be two kite festivals there in October,\u201d he says, \u201cso the idea is kite flying and honeymooning all together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen the education career came to a sudden end, I was kind of looking around like, \u2018OK, what do I do now?\u2019\u201d Phil Broder worked in environmental education for 25 years before his career path suddenly changed, and he found himself starting his own kite-making supply business. As a student at Clemson, Broder studied wildlife […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":19170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1736,1737,1738,2770,2772,3267],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-kite-festivals","tag-kite-making","tag-kites","tag-summer-2018","tag-summer-2018-alumni-profiles","tag-wildlife-and-fisheries-biology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/06\/Phil-Broder_Profile.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19122"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}