Moorhead indigenous turns quest for great headband into $2 million small business

But someway, at not rather 30, she’s come to be all three.

Krabbenhoft, a 2009 Moorhead Substantial graduate, really started off out on a completely various route: She was finding out to turn out to be a food stuff scientist and professor at North Dakota State University.

But she had a modest dilemma: She could not uncover a at ease, very good-searching headband to keep her hair out of her eyes while she pursued a demanding system of lessons, labs and finding out.

Last but not least, she decided to make her possess headband, so she lugged mom Yvonne’s aged Kenmore sewing machine out of storage and made a trip to a regional fabric keep.

Soon after some experimentation, Krabbenhoft stitched up a headband that checked all the packing containers. It was at ease, it stayed place and it was style-ahead with a jaunty knot on prime.

Friends and acquaintances so liked Krabbenhoft’s headbands that they questioned if she could make some for them. She gave the 1st kinds absent, but as the requests greater, she understood she could parlay her interest into a side hustle.

That was five a long time back. These days, Krabbenhoft’s Soulvation Culture brand name has blossomed into a 100% self-funded, lady-owned brand name with over $2 million in revenue and zero debt.

And Krabbenhoft might be one particular of the few style experts out there who could also give a dissertation on carbohydrate chemistry.

“Food science was a great discipline to be in,” she suggests. “I had a good professor, it was a great program and I beloved it. But I just had an itch just to make a model, or just to make some thing for myself.”

She absolutely succeeded. Content articles on Soulvation’s story and products have been showcased in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, NBC, CBS, the Chicago Weekly and Oxygen journal. Her item is bought as a result of retail internet sites like FreePeople, which demonstrates her boho-stylish vibe.

And her products has gained countless numbers of glowing Instagram mentions ranging from millennial social-media influencers to nurses who rave about the headbands extremely-tender come to feel.

In point, Soulvation Society’s internet site champions itself as the “Property of the butter-soft headbands.”

The Denver-based enterprise has expanded its merchandise line to scrunchies, bandanas, turbands (a turban-headband hybrid) and their bestselling hair-ties, which double as boho-design bracelets (that’s a further Krabbenhoft innovation.)

The previous year’s good results hit so all of a sudden that Krabbenhoft admits it has not fully registered however. “It doesn’t experience like it, even to this day,” she states. “It nevertheless feels like I’m at property, stitching headbands, attempting to make it operate.”

Krabbenhoft settled in the Mile-Higher Metropolis due to the fact her best buddy from superior college, Ashley Stalboerger, had previously moved there, it experienced a centralized location and she loved the area’s attractiveness and four-time weather conditions.

Not that she had a lot of time to get pleasure from it. She worked out of her have apartment, diligently sewing headbands, mailing out orders, and reinvesting profits into the small business to enable it improve.

And then …. COVID. Krabbenhoft was in the midst of looking for new companies and a greater cloth when the world seemed to screech to a halt. The source chain dried up, as did her inventory. “We were being actually out of stock 4 months because of the pandemic,” she states. “We had hardly any income.”

Amid all this, Krabbenhoft discovered the fabric that transformed anything: a kitten-delicate bamboo-spandex. When these “butter-delicate” pieces hit the web-site, shoppers clamored for them. Persons eagerly snatched up the headbands, retailing at $15.20 for every headband or $54.20 for a 5-pack. Sales skyrocketed from $120,000 in 2019 to last year’s $2 million mark.

Even at this point, Krabbenhoft remained a one-particular person operation.

“I was hand-sewing all the things,” she suggests. “My entire place was all fabric and a sewing device and my bed. That was it.”

Krabbenhoft promptly recognized she needed aid — even if it intended giving up some regulate. “I was these a perfectionist,” she says. “The stitching experienced to be fantastic, the delivery experienced to be excellent. So slowly but surely transitioning and employing enable was frightening since it was my brand. I wished to do it how I needed it. But then I was like, ‘If I want to increase this, I need assistance.'”

Today, Krabbenhoft’s Soulvation Culture employs eight men and women, has moved manufacturing to China and involves a 3,000-sq.-foot warehouse for inventory.

One particular will get the emotion that Krabbenhoft is just finding began. Bolstered by her the latest accomplishment and the energy of youth, she is also developing a line of boutique apparel, patterned immediately after her trademark boho aesthetic. In point, she wears just one merchandise from the clothing line through her job interview: a relaxed, button-down, white-and-black windowpane-plaid shirt in a gentle, cozy material.

“Even now to this day, I despise sporting large heels,” she suggests. “If it is really not comfortable, I never want to don it. The apparel line is really very similar: incredibly comfy, but you continue to glimpse very adorable.”

She’s also completely ready to contribute to her local community, and ideas to donate headbands to the nurses at Sanford Health and fitness.

Krabbenhoft’s generosity extends to a willingness to share what she’s acquired. She is developing an e-commerce system, which will demonstrate how to make a successful start-up, which include insight on how to “snowball” progress to reduce financial debt.

“In a really odd way, I guess I even now did develop into a professor,” she suggests, smiling.

Obtain Krabbenhoft’s products and solutions at www.soulvationsociety.com.