A small jewelry-making company is starting to go national from its home in Chelsea.
Hoola makes small kits of jewelry that allow its users to make their own custom-set of earrings by adding gemstones or precious metals to the hoop. The company started out as a one-woman operation selling jewelry at art fairs and private parties. It is now growing into a national operation where sales people sell the kits at parties of their own.
"A woman does the design on her own," says Ginger Sissom, vice president of operations for
Hoola. "You put them together in all these different ways so you can make your own new earrings."
Hoola now employs a core team of six people and another eight part-time artisans in Chelsea. It is expanding to a team of 50 sales reps across the middle of the U.S. in states like Michigan, Ohio and Texas, among other states in the Midwest and South of the country. The company hopes to expand to more territory across North America over the rest of this year and next.
"We've grown pretty quickly pretty fast," Sissom says. "Everything just fell into place. We got the product line right and made it affordable to sell the kit to a single sales rep."
Source: Ginger Sissom, vice president of operations for Hoola
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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