The Silly Band Craze

Written by Katrina Daniel Thursday, November 25 2010

Snapshot: April Mraz and Cherie Stine

Mraz, left, and Stine: Kids’ stuff

If there are young children in your life, you can’t help but notice the bazillions of colored rubber bands they wear in huge numbers on their wrists: funky, creative, unusual, twisted, colored rubber bands in all kinds of shapes. Who’d have thought that thin silicone bands on kids’ wrists would earn big bucks? Turns out April Mraz and Cherie Stine did.

The two “mompreneurs,” as their friends refer to them, are producing and selling – Are you ready? – millions of bracelets a week.

They operate out of Birmingham, Ala., and they have four factories in China snapping out as many bracelets as possible, 3.6 million each week, to the tune of $7 million in sales in just their first nine months in the Stretchy Shapes game.

Womenetics: What are your backgrounds and how did you come to create Stretchy Shapes?
Cherie Stine: (who calls herself the sales chick): We found each other after moving into the same Birmingham neighborhood. After dropping our kids off at school, we’d meet in the mornings. We spoke the same business/marketing language. One morning after we dropped the kids off April wondered aloud why stores were having trouble keeping silicone bands in stock. Her insatiable curiosity prompted her to discover how to buy the products wholesale from companies that are now competitors of Stretchy Shapes.

April Mraz: I opened a kiosk at the local mall to sell only silicone animal bracelets and then recruited Cherie to manage a second location just for the holiday season in 2009. In seven weeks our two locations sold more than 42,000 packs of silicone bands.

Stine: We found we weren’t always able to get the volume of inventory that we required, and April once again started researching and figured out how to design and manufacture her own line of silicone animal bracelets. Stretchy Shapes was born.

Mraz: Our backgrounds are in marketing and business. I graduated from Samford University with a degree in graphic design. I worked in agencies in Birmingham and San Francisco, and in 2002 I started my own advertising agency, Open Creative Group, in Birmingham.

Stine: I have a bachelor’s in psychology and an MBA in marketing. I have held executive positions with Nielsen Television Ratings and several luxury resort communities, including Canyon Ranch.

Womenetics: How did you morph from moms to silicone-bracelet moguls?
Mraz: We were on the front lines while we ran retail stores. We saw what kids wanted. We saw what parents responded to. Also, we experienced what we considered to be terrible customer service and amateur sales processing in dealing with the vendors for these products. We couldn’t help but think we could do it better.

Womenetics: Sure, rubber band bracelets are hot right now, but they are a trend with a definite shelf life set to expire. What’s next for you two?
Stine: Stretchy Shapes are certainly a fad, and although we are still selling primarily on the West Coast, our international sales are heating up.

Mraz: But we are planning ahead. We are excited about our next product line, Tech Candy, that will launch in Atlanta in January at the Road Runners Showroom at America’s Mart. Tech Candy is a line of innovative, high design, iPhone and iPad cases for women, teens, and children.

Stine: We’d like to re-create ourselves every year, using all the skills we are learning – and, yes, we have learned a lot with Stretchy Shapes – and build on the relationships we have cultivated with major retail players. And keep having fun.

Katrina Daniel is an award-winning journalist and broadcast reporter/anchor. She has worked in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and as a national correspondent for several networks. She commutes between Miami and the Carolinas, writing for magazines and news organizations. She lives with one horse, four dogs, and a cat.