Stella Headbands and Accessories

Meet the 4 young entrepreneurs behind Stella Accessories, whose fashion accessories have been featured on TV and in magazines - all while they're still in college!

Audra Lowe: Best friends, roommates, college classmates and they’re also business partners, smart women here. They’ve created their own fashion company before even graduating from college. Take a look at this story behind these four entrepreneurs and their headband empire. Meet Alexia, Samantha, Danielle and Taylor. Four Manhattan college students who are living out their dreams as fashion entrepreneurs, starting out their own successful company Stella, all while they’re still in school. Alexia Panza: We had team headbands in our early—for hundreds of dollars and—and other stores and we were like, “We can make that.” We say that about every thing. So we decided, well, let’s give it a try. Audra Lowe: At first they just figured that they wear the headbands themselves. Samantha Vigorito: We just got such great feedback from it, that we would bring them to school and girls would kind of like pick what they wanted and bring in cash for us. Audra Lowe: School sales aside, the real big break came after going to an open sea at Henri Bendel’s. Samantha Vigorito: Bendel’s has done this special open sea where designers can come in and see if their products are good enough to use, and Bendel’s or what Bendel’s looking for and people come from all over the country and, there are people from Japan skin products, everyone had their stuff like all their props and we come like with this huge like we’ll take diorama. Alexia Panza: The volcano project that you’re making very great. Samantha Vigorito: And it had all of these headbands on it. Audra Lowe: But their unorthodox display worked and Bendel’s invented them to participate in a trunk shelf. Danielle Zuckerman: And we were all calling each other freaking out. It was a really good feeling. Samantha Vigorito: That’s our first big thing that happened to us. Danielle Zuckerman: Yeah and I think that’s kind of when we realized too that like this is going somewhere. Audra Lowe: And gone somewhere it has, today Stella headbands have been featured on Gossip girl and worn by celebs like Jessica Alba and they’ve been prominently featured in popular women’s magazines like In Style and Star. Stella Suvrue: It’s really so real, it’s crazy. Sometimes I feel like when I’m class when I do homework, I like don’t even realize that all of these cool things are happening at the same time. Audra Lowe: So what’s the secret to their seemingly overnight headband success? Danielle Zuckerman: I think that they’re really different and really unique and especially in the beginning too, we were using a lot of like vintage pieces from our grandparents or our parents, pieces of jewelry. So I think that that really got people like intrigued, kind of about the company and then since then, we’ve just developed really unique and kind of funky, but still really girly. Audra Lowe: As the company itself, affectionately named after their dog Stella, who while a big fan of the girls, is not so keen on headbands. But with success comes struggling, building a business while in school full time has been a challenge. Stella Suvrue: Sometimes they get hectic, but I think that we always keep in mind that like the outcome is so worth it and everything has been really exciting and we’re lucky to have all of this opportunity, so we just try and do as much as we can and balance it as best we can. Audra Lowe: Luckily they say, they always have each other to fall back on when the going gets rough. Danielle Zuckerman: When one person is freaking out, we’re like okay, like take a breath and we kind of all like balance each other out and everything, so we just make it work. Stella Suvrue: But it’s almost like we’ve created a family, when anyone got out of town, it’s like something’s missing. So we’re really lucky that we have such a great relationship. Audra Lowe: A relationship and a business that will hopefully drive for years to come. Got a good thing going there, so what’s up next for these young entrepreneurs, well graduating college for one and hopefully expanding the distribution of their headbands, in addition to branching out to other accessories. For a link to their headbands, you can go to our website at bettertv.com.