HairZing
Tagline: Social responsibility in action
Co-founders: Fran Kuglen and Holli Montgomery
Founded: 2003
Mission: bring business to female entrepreneurs in areas with limited resources and economic infrastructure.

For most people, getting their product on QVC is a dream come true. For Fran Kuglen, who by 2003 had built a 20-year relationship with QVC, it was an easy way to test-market a hair accessory on her chosen path to social entrepreneurship.

"When I named the product, really I was interested in creating a product that didn't need electricity," Kuglen says. "Because I've often thought about how can you make a supply chain friendlier? How can you bring it to women who are in areas where there are no other jobs?

"It has to be something relatively portable, it has to be something that makes use of their skills and talents. It has to be something that's dignified, and it has to fit with their lifestyle. And this product did it. I was excited from the beginning."

The product, HairZing, proved itself on QVC. By 2005, Kuglen was ready to take the project to its next logical step, so she teamed up with Holli Montgomery, a longtime business acquaintance who was ready to leave the corporate world.

"If we had thought in May of 2005 that it would have taken us as long and as many hard knocks as we've taken, I honestly don't know if I could tell you we'd have enough grit," Montgomery says. They ran into a recession in the U.S., war in Nairobi and troubles in Kenya. But they persevered, confident they had a product that could succeed in bringing employment to women in areas with limited resources.

The key to their vision: HairZing--which is patent pending--isn't just a single product, it's a category. "We know it can grow into 15 different things. It can be made out of seeds in Kenya or pearls in Thailand," Kuglan says. "That makes it one step friendlier for the entire worker chain."

Kuglen started out creating the product at a factory in China. But QVC needed more quantity, and Kuglen and Montgomery weren't happy with the quality. They decided they would find a way to set up women's groups in rural china, so the women wouldn't have to leave their homes to go to a factory in the city.

Fortunately, they found the Su family, which started by putting together a team of 20 women. Now the women's groups encompass about 300 Chinese women. "In pretty weather, they're outside at tables together: The older women are cutting resin to the right size and doing resin testing, and the younger women are doing bead work," Montgomery says. But during rice paddy season, they switch the work around. The older women will do more of the bead work while the younger women harvest the rice. "It's a flexible work schedule, so it works for the team." Despite recent bad press the country has received, "We're in China, but we're proud to be in China," Montgomery says.

The next stop was Africa and, specifically, the Maasai, who are known to be excellent beaders. Finding a way in proved difficult, however. Relief agencies couldn't help. Neither could the U.N. So Kuglen left it up to the universe--and the universe responded. Getting ready for an appearance on QVC one day, Kuglen met two models. Somehow, she knew she should ask them, "Do you know anybody in the Maasai tribe in Kenya I could speak with?"

One of them did. She knew someone who works with the Maasai in Kenya, she told Kuglen. In a matter of hours, Kuglen was speaking with Phyllis Eckelmeyer, who founded the Maasai Cultural Exchange Project. MCEP works with the Simba Maasai Outreach Organization, a Kenyan NGO, to bring wells to the Maasai's desert home.

A few months later, Kuglen and Montgomery were in Kenya's Rift Valley to set up a collective now known as Olorien ("olive tree"). HairZings in hand, they gathered about 100 women at a cultural center in the midst of Maasai territory, intending to have the women play with the product to learn about it firsthand. What they didn't realize is the way women have adjusted to the scarcity of water in Maasi lands--without water to clean their hair, the women shave it off.

Kuglen and Montgomery adapted. They demonstrated the product on themselves and spent a couple of days under acacia trees with the women, teaching them some business basics along with the characteristics of the HairZing. "The women already knew how to bead," Kuglen says. "But they had never seen a product like ours before, and the whole concept of it stretching was really curious to them."

The collective numbers about 100 women, with a waiting list of about 700 women who need jobs. First, though, HairZing has to create a bigger market for the product.

HairZing has sold $2 million worth of product since inception, and Kuglen and Montgomery expect 2009 to be a breakthrough year. They aim to move into retail, and they're considering alternative sales, such as fundraising for schools. They are experimenting with a Cherokee tribe in Alabama, which would create its own designs, and they're planning to move a new, less expensive line to the United States. It has no wire comb, fewer beads and is made from elastic. "The wire combs with the heavy beading take about 45 minutes to make, and at an American's labor rate, that's very expensive," Montgomery says.

"Our supply chain is a very high expense, even though we're a pretty lean, virtual company," Montgomery says. "What we need to do is create the market. We need people to understand what a great hair accessory it is. It will grow," she says, confidently.