Sophie Trelles-Tvede, the 18-year-old millionaire who managed to sell hair bands in 70 countries

Entrepreneurs

The daughter of a Gijón woman, she came up with a business that led her to enter the Forbes list '30 under 30'

Antonio Orti

In 2011, a pack of 30 hair bands cost around one euro. These fabric-covered elastics were welded at the ends by a small piece of metal that hooked into the hair. Lo and behold, Sophie Trelles-Tvede, an 18-year-old girl with a Spanish mother and a Danish father, came up with a business that would lead her to enter the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2016.

Today Sophie is 28 years old and sells more than 100 million hair ties in 110,000 retail stores in 70 countries. As he explains in almost perfect Spanish, from Munich (Germany), where Invisibobble has its headquarters, part of his family (his grandmother, his aunts, his uncles...) resides in Asturias and, more specifically in Gijón, the city from where her mother comes from, although now she lives in Switzerland, surrounded by green hills and the warm aroma of cow manure.

Trelles-Tvede has just published 100 million Hair Ties and a Vodka Tonic (Lid) to explain how she turned those fateful rubber bands she used to tie her hair into a fashion product worn by even the Kardashian sisters.

The genie in the bottle appeared shortly after she arrived at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) to study her first year of Administration. “One night there was a party on campus whose theme was bad taste. I was to dress in the ugliest look possible, drink a lot and hope that my outfit would be the topic of conversation,” she recalls. “On my way out, I saw the coiled cord of the landline phone in my room, and I unplugged it and tied it to my hair. I wrapped it around my ponytail a couple of times so the spirals would stick out. He looked perfectly ugly!” he continues.

How to create a company from scratch, according to Sophie Trelles-Tvede

Until she moved to the UK for her degree, Trelles-Tvede had always thought that to open her own business she had to do the following: “get a degree, find yourself and find out what your interests are (estimated time: between three and five years). Then, "do a master's degree and deepen what you have studied (duration: one year)". Then, “look for a good job, earn money and get financial security (duration: 25 years)”. Finally, she "starts the business that you had dreamed of when you were a student (although, most likely, someone will have already done it by now, so your prospects will be rather slim)". To tell the truth, “that was my attitude, and I think a lot of people think the same way. However, based on my experience, it can be done in another way,” she indicates. Her magic formula has many variables, like bringing all the company members together every month in the company's internal bar to keep the pioneering spirit intact. Also "focus on oneself and not look left or right or what the competition is doing." But the summary can be found in the TDEx talk that Trelles-Tvede gave in 2015. In it, he focused on three issues: ideas for new products or businesses can be “phenomenally successful (in my experience) if 1- they are simple, 2- if they are cheap, and 3- if they allow you to succeed without being an expert in the chosen field, since this can allow you to do things in a different way”, he said then.

it's really fucking funny how i start seeing parallels between my faves like niall making a drink with gin looking… https://t.co/YJVAbLaUvK

— val Tue Jul 20 17:24:13 +0000 2021

The next morning Sophie woke up with the phone cord still on her head and wondered if maybe - just maybe - she had found something interesting because, unlike other times, her hair didn't have marks on her head and she didn't have a headache from the morning. tension of the rubber bands when pulling the scalp. That's how it all started.

The next thing Sophie did was call Felix Haffa, her boyfriend from the ages of 16 to 23, who was studying at Bath University Business School, about three hours away by train. “Tell me more!” he exclaimed. Some time later, they both decided to invest 3,000 pounds sterling (about 3,500 euros) in a new elastic band with a spiral shape, “the equivalent of 1,350 vodka tonics in a student bar”, Sophie jokes.

Chiara Ferragni has the most wanted hair accessory of the moment

Just like handbags, gold hoop earrings and other mysterious trends in the past, spiral hair ties became a favorite for many women. And all thanks to word of mouth, since neither Sophie nor Felix had money for marketing campaigns or positioning on the Internet. Its great asset was to convert a product without grace, which fulfilled a function (gather hair, make braids, pigtails...), into a stylish product with which to express oneself, because hair ties, when not in use, are worn on the wrist or as a bracelet (which made them great walking advertisements…) “If almost all women need to buy hair ties several times a month… why not make it a positive experience?” both entrepreneurs thought. “What we did was put emotions into the hair ties”, sums up Sophie.

Makeup, nails or hair are all great ways to style and are much less expensive than fashion, so spirals in different shapes quickly became very attractive to many consumers.

hair elastics

Spirals of different shapes quickly became very attractive to many consumers.

“In Spain they like the same colors as in the rest of the world: black, transparent and pink. All women in the world are pretty much the same in that respect”, explains Trelles-Tvede, outlining a smile. “The main distinctive feature of the Spanish market is that there are no chains as big as in Germany or the United States, so penetrating it is more difficult,” she says.

Regarding the sustainability of its hair ties, Trelles-Tvede states that they are made with a completely recyclable plastic, unlike common hair ties, which often have a metal bar that joins them, making it difficult to recycle. “The important thing is to use a single material so that recycling will be possible. And also change the traditional way of consuming hair accessories. Our erasers, when immersed in hot water, recover their original shape, that is, they are not single-use products. Three of our hair ties cost five euros, but with a little care, they can last for more than a year”.

Trelles-Tvede's book is a logbook for navigating emerging businesses. For example, packaging completely differently – “as if hair ties were candy”, says Sophie – can be a determining factor for success. To give personality to their rubber bands, what Invisibobble did is baptize them with fun names. For example, instead of calling a hair tie “green,” she was called mint to be (in English, a play on words between meant to be, predestined, and mint, mint).

Another of her tips for when the business starts to take off is to be careful with small defaults, because even a small amount of 14 euros (as happened to Sophie and Felix) can affect the credit rating. It also does not hurt to take out weather insurance when part of the manufacturing takes place abroad. When in 2014 the company was starting to take flight and the orders were beginning to pile up, a typhoon left the Chinese plant where the hair ties were made unusable for three weeks. There are many more anecdotes related to China: from the proliferation of imitations, to the need to personally control production and quality (the representative in China defrauded the company of 2.8 million dollars).

Invisibobble scrunchies

Trelles-Tvede states that they are made with a completely recyclable plastic

Regarding whether it is possible to set up a business with the better half, Sophie and Felix started dating when they were 16 years old and when they had been together for seven years they decided to end their relationship. “As things progressed on Invisibobble, they kind of regressed between us. I guess we were so focused on the business that we forgot about ourselves,” admits Sophie. "One sunny Sunday, Felix came to my apartment and we decided to separate. We were very sad, but we knew it was for the best, even though we decided we were old enough to continue working together," she says.

As for the US experience, here's a possible summary: "Americans may tell you you're great, but they don't always mean it," warns Trelles-Tvede. At least, that was his experience in Las Vegas, after going to a business fair: after exhibiting his product, there was no shortage of people who came to his stand to exclaim “Wonderful!”, “It's so cool!”, “Wow! Your brand is in-cre-i-ble!”, “You guys are great!”. However, “it turned out to be the least successful trade show we've ever been to. We got absolutely nothing from her, neither an e-mail nor a call”, recognizes Trelles-Tvede.

The penultimate piece of advice is to internalize that unforeseen events or, more clearly, disasters occur in every company. "The one good thing that came out of all the disasters we've been through was something every brand needs to think about: innovation," she says.

Coinciding with some bump, the company launched some of its most disruptive collections. In Cookie Dough Craving, Invisibobble managed to infuse their hair ties with the sweet scent of freshly baked cookies. For its part, given the need to create something for the US luxury store, it was decided to make some elastic bands in metallic colors so that the hair ties would be perceived as jewelry that someone could wear on their wrists or forearms.

Sophie's last piece of advice is a reminder: complacency is the death of success. "Some brands are very vanilla when it comes to marketing, but in our case that doesn't work," she explains. “The worst way I can let myself down is by being average, because if you're average, you just blend in with the crowd. Everyone likes vanilla ice cream, but it's not anyone's favorite. Sometimes it is much better to take a risk, ”she concludes.

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