A simple hair rubber has become a millionaire a young Spanish entrepreneur who, at 28, manages an emporium that invades 20 million euros per year.
The idea of the cackle that does not leave marks or strip of the hair emerged by pure coincidence, when Sophie Trelles-Tvede became a pigtail with a phone cord to go to a festival of students watered with a lot of vodka.
The next day she woke up with hangover but without a headache and her hair at her room.
She was 18 years old and had given the key of a business that she has also made her boyfriend rich then.
Sophie and Felix Haffa are no longer a couple, but they are still partners of InvisiBobble, the company based in Munich that manufactures the famous rolled gums as a cable.
After selling more than one hundred million coleterations in 70 Sophie, Asturian mother and father Danish, he has published his experience at 100 million Hair Tiess and a Vodka Tonic (Lid Editorial), a book written with a lot of humor where he tells the way that
He has led him to be a successful businesswoman.
“It has not been easy because they did not take us seriously, we were some kids and the end of the hair gums is similar to the toilet paper, it is something necessary but it is not cool,” says Sophie to Loc.
“The entrepreneurship is written with gold letters, it seems that it is easy to assemble a company but it is not true, the work is sometimes a shit. That is why I have written the book, which pretends to inspire young people above all.”
He has just returned to Munich after spending a few days in Madrid with his mother, Itziar Trelles, an Asturian who left Gijón to discover world and ended up working in Copenhagen.
There she met her husband, Lars Tvede, investor, financial advisor and author of successful books.
Sophie has more like Nordic (Danish genes have had to pull more) than from Spanish, but he says that his mother’s land throws him a lot.
She even she has the grandmother of her in Asturias and several cousins of her.
“I love Spain, I come as long as I can, even if going to Gijón from Germany for a weekend is complicated, that’s why we usually go to Madrid. My boyfriend, is also from Madrid. My mother has always spoken to us in Spanish
Sister and me and I can not be more proud to be half Spanish, “he confesses.
He grew up in Switzerland, where his parents were installed when she was born, and studied business administration in Warwick, England, where he was taught that the maximum in this life is to be an entrepreneur.
But not anything, of course.
“I was very bored in class, they constantly show you Silicon Valley, the technological startups and those things. A classmate gave him a grant of 25,000 pounds for I do not know what idea of an application that occurred to him. Our gums,
Sure, they seemed ridiculous and looked at us over his shoulder, “he recalls.
Sophie and her boyfriend found a Chinese manufacturer who made them the first coloners of colors and one year later received an order of 20,000 boots packets, the most important parafarmacy chain in Great Britain.
“That’s when I realized that the thing was serious and that I would not have to look for another job.”
Both Sophie and Felix had to fight against many prejudices, such as your youth or pint of rich and pijixed children.
Many people believed that their parents were behind the project.
“At all, they supported us from the beginning but they did not put a hard because they did not believe much that we could live on this, we mounted invisibobble with 4,000 euros that we had saved by giving skiing skiing on vacation and lesser
What came to cost 1.350 vodka tonics at the parties of the university. Hence the name of the book, “he says.
In these ten years the company has grown a lot and Sophie and its three partners – in addition to Felix, a brother and a friend of both – already have other hair products such as headbands, brushes and creams.
They have never considered selling the company or entry to other partners, despite the million-dollar figures they handle.
“We get along very well, we do not want to put external people because we do what we want, I want to be my own boss and our plan is to continue growing.”
The success of the gums of it has also led to it to appear in the Forbes list of children under 30 more influential years in Europe.
Sales did not even descend during the pandemic.
Upside the other way, they sold more than ever because they were left to carry loose the manes and at home the whole world became the pigtail.
The United States is now the market they want to exploit and also makes it much illusion Spain, where they have several points of sale but, it says, it is a difficult country because there are no big chains like in Germany or England.
After the paron of the Sophie pandemic has recovered the frenetic rhythm of flights and airports, with the suitcase full of coleterals.
“My mother always tells me that I have to stop a little, that he does not see my hair, she is the best, always is there when I have a problem, I always help me, well, she and madrid, where I’ll be back as long as I can eat
and disconnect. I flip “.
