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

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

Krabbenhoft, a 2009 Moorhead Substantial graduate, essentially started out on a absolutely various route: She was researching to grow to be a food stuff scientist and professor at North Dakota Condition University.

But she experienced a modest challenge: She could not obtain a comfortable, great-seeking headband to hold her hair out of her eyes though she pursued a demanding training course of classes, labs and researching.

At last, she decided to make her own headband, so she lugged mom Yvonne’s aged Kenmore stitching machine out of storage and designed a journey to a neighborhood material shop.

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

Leah Kay Krabbenhoft’s very first headband is observed upcoming to a photo of her as a baby putting on it on Thursday, April 1, 2021, at the Lodge Donaldson in Fargo. Krabbenhoft now owns a profitable headband business enterprise known as Soulvation Society.
Alyssa Goelzer / The Discussion board

Friends and acquaintances so preferred Krabbenhoft’s headbands that they questioned if she could make some for them. She gave the first ones absent, but as the requests amplified, she understood she could parlay her passion into a side hustle.

That was 5 yrs back. Now, Krabbenhoft’s Soulvation Modern society brand has blossomed into a 100% self-funded, girl-owned brand with about $2 million in revenue and zero personal debt.

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

“Food stuff science was a good subject to be in,” she states. “I had a fantastic professor, it was a excellent plan and I loved it. But I just experienced an itch just to make a brand, or just to make anything for myself.”

She definitely succeeded. Posts on Soulvation’s story and solutions have been highlighted in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, NBC, CBS, the Chicago Weekly and Oxygen magazine. Her product or service is bought via retail websites like FreePeople, which reflects her boho-stylish vibe.

And her merchandise has been given thousands of glowing Instagram mentions ranging from millennial social-media influencers to nurses who rave about the headbands extremely-delicate sense.

In point, Soulvation Society’s web page champions by itself as the “House of the butter-delicate headbands.”

Leah Kay Krabbenhoft, the operator of Soulvation Culture, demonstrates off her tattoo that matches the brand’s brand on Thursday, April 1, 2021, at the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo. Krabbenhoft says that “the arrows signify next your individual path, and to preserve shifting forward no matter of what existence throws in your way.”
Alyssa Goelzer / The Forum

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

The previous year’s results hit so quickly that Krabbenhoft admits it has not absolutely registered however. “It will not really feel like it, even to this working day,” she suggests. “It nevertheless feels like I’m at property, sewing headbands, seeking to make it get the job done.”

Krabbenhoft settled in the Mile-Higher Town since her best close friend from higher university, Ashley Stalboerger, had currently moved there, it had a centralized location and she cherished the area’s natural beauty and 4-period climate.

Not that she experienced a great deal of time to enjoy it. She labored out of her possess apartment, diligently stitching headbands, mailing out orders, and reinvesting earnings into the business enterprise to assistance it increase.

And then …. COVID. Krabbenhoft was in the midst of on the lookout for new brands and a better cloth when the entire world appeared to screech to a halt. The supply chain dried up, as did her inventory. “We ended up actually out of stock 4 months since of the pandemic,” she suggests. “We experienced rarely any income.”

Amid all this, Krabbenhoft observed the fabric that altered everything: a kitten-smooth bamboo-spandex. When these “butter-gentle” parts strike the website, buyers clamored for them. Men and women eagerly snatched up the headbands, retailing at $15.20 for every headband or $54.20 for a 5-pack. Profits skyrocketed from $120,000 in 2019 to past year’s $2 million mark.

Even at this stage, Krabbenhoft remained a one particular-individual procedure.

“I was hand-sewing every little thing,” she claims. “My whole area was all fabric and a sewing equipment and my mattress. That was it.”

Krabbenhoft rapidly realized she wanted assist — even if it intended providing up some management. “I was such a perfectionist,” she says. “The stitching had to be fantastic, the transport had to be excellent. So slowly but surely transitioning and hiring enable was scary for the reason that it was my brand. I preferred to do it how I wished it. But then I was like, ‘If I want to grow this, I have to have assist.'”

Now, Krabbenhoft’s Soulvation Modern society employs 8 folks, has moved producing to China and incorporates a 3,000-square-foot warehouse for inventory.

Leah Kay Krabbenhoft, operator of Soulvation Modern society, stands with a photograph of herself as a youngster in her very first headband although she versions 1 of her very own Soulvation-model headbands on Thursday, April 1, 2021 at the Lodge Donaldson in Fargo.
Alyssa Goelzer / The Forum

1 will get the experience that Krabbenhoft is just having begun. Bolstered by her current achievement and the strength of youth, she is also designing a line of boutique garments, patterned just after her trademark boho aesthetic. In actuality, she wears just one merchandise from the garments line all through her job interview: a comfortable, button-down, white-and-black windowpane-plaid shirt in a gentle, cozy fabric.

“Still to this working day, I detest sporting superior heels,” she claims. “If it truly is uncomfortable, I do not want to don it. The apparel line is quite related: extremely comfortable, but you continue to glance extremely cute.”

She’s also prepared to lead to her group, and strategies to donate headbands to the nurses at Sanford Health and fitness.

Krabbenhoft’s generosity extends to a willingness to share what she’s realized. She is developing an e-commerce program, which will show how to create a thriving start-up, which includes insight on how to “snowball” progress to minimize personal debt.

“In a really unusual way, I guess I continue to did turn out to be a professor,” she suggests, smiling.

Find Krabbenhoft’s merchandise at www.soulvationsociety.com.