We recently connected with Laura Castle and have shared our conversation below.
Laura, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I was going to a lot of festivals and concerts and really wanted to get a handmade tie-dye in my size, but I am an extra large and I had a lot of problems finding anything even just in an extra large! So, my friend suggested that I make my own, and I got together with my cousin and her daughter, and I tie-dyed for the first time ever! I instantly became obsessed with it and started trying to tie-dye everything that I could in the house, including taking down the curtains and dying them. After making my own tie-dyes for a couple months, my friends really wanted me to make some for them. We had a friend kayaking trip coming up so I made everyone tank tops and I literally popped up my trunk hung them from my trunk and sold them in the parking lot to my friends and two other people who were going kayaking down the river that day that I didn’t even know! The next step that I took was I started vending at pop-up events. The first one I did was in Rio, Town and Lansing at the Vintage Junkies vendor event. My friend Casey helped me pop up at all the events and we sold the heck out of tie-dyes and that’s when I realized that maybe I had something, so then I met a woman named Najeema and she was on weekly vendor markets called afterglow and so we did those that summer almost every Friday.
From there I’m at Julie from downtown Lansing and she wanted me to participate in there new small business incubator called Middle Village Micro Market in downtown Lansing for small businesses. Things went very well there and I ended up getting my own shop in downtown
Laura, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I make handmade tie-dyes and I try and make them as size inclusive as I possibly can. I usually have sizes small to 5X available in some of the pieces. I try to only get blank pieces of clothing to tie-dye that will include plus sizes because I want everyone to feel amazing! One of my goals with my tie-dye business is to genuinely make people feel amazing while they’re wearing it I want to hopefully bring their mood up which will improve the moods of the people around them and then hopefully they’ll pass it on and eventually we will have peace because of tie-dyes ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
I am very proud to be inclusive. I often have women and men mostly women walk in and immediately say oh I know nothing is gonna fit me in here because it’s a boutique and I have to stop them right there and tell them absolutely not come in and look around and there is stuff for you here!
Something else that I’m proud of is the fact that almost everything in there is locally made. We have art from local artist, jewelry from local artist I have stickers from local artist, even the incense is made locally!
I am also pretty proud of the fact that I have thrown 10 makers markets in the past three years in downtown Lansing, which (hopefully) benefited the small businesses and the vendors!
Can you talk to us about your experience with buying businesses?
I’m not sure how much this relates to the actual question but I did wanna include that I used to own an insurance agency! I owned a Farmers insurance agency for five years and honestly it was a good gig but my husband and I had a baby and I wanted to stay home with her and so I sold the agency and then stayed home for three years with her, and then started making tie-dye.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
When I started making the tie-dyes, I use some of our family money maybe a couple hundred dollars and then from there I just kept selling and then I take the profit from that and I’d make more and then I’d sell them and I’d make more! I’m not sure that that’s how all businesses will work out but that’s how it’s been so far for Capital Hippie!
Contact Info:
- Website: Capitalhippie.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalhippie?igsh=eG5iaXd3aTd0bGNk&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalhippie?mibextid=tPfjzR
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@capitalhippie
- Yelp: https://yelp.to/2Ngoaruuow
Image Credits
The first image is by Lennon James