Manda Bees: a local headband empire

By Kalea Hall

khall@vindy.com

WARREN

Surrounded by her multicolor, multipattern headbands, Amanda Chine reflects back to how her headband empire first started.

It was really all out of frustration.

She purchased an expensive headband to use while teaching her first yoga class at The ClassRoom Aerobics and Training Studio in Austintown.

“It ruined my teaching experience,” said Chine, 27, of Warren.

The owner of Manda Bees Headbands went to her grandma, Sharon Albanese, for help in making her own headband.

Chine and Albanese investigated the headband to figure out how it was sewn together.

“I had a sewing machine and helped her,” Albanese said. “She’s really come a long way and built this all by herself.”

Her business started with just a headband for her, then her yoga clients wanted one, and then she started an etsy.com account and the world wanted one.

To date, Chine’s etsy.com orders have topped 15,000. This doesn’t even include the amount of headbands she’s sold at the number of fairs she’s attended.

“I accidentally started a business, I always say,” Chine said from inside her quaint boutique in downtown Warren.

Debbie Caggiano, owner of The ClassRoom and a personal trainer, remembers when the headband idea came to Chine.

In spring 2012, Chine and Caggiano went to Florida for exercise training. At the training, Chine bought some expensive headbands and was looking at how they were made.

She said, “I know I can make this myself,” Caggiano said. “I told her she should go for it.”

To no surprise, she did.

“She’s a very artistic soul,” Caggiano said. “She’s a very hard worker. And an amazing young lady.”

Chine would bring in headbands as prototypes to The ClassRoom.

“She would measure my head,” Caggiano said. “She really stuck with it. And her grandma was her driving force.”

Not long after Chine started to wear her own headbands did people want their own.

She decided to start selling them out of a fishbowl at The ClassRoom’s front desk.

Caggiano encouraged Chine to make the headbands look a little more presentable at the front desk.

Chine’s grandma always called her Manda Bee, which fit for the headband business.

She drew a little bee and put them on her headbands.

Little did she know, she was starting to create her brand.

Then came her etsy.com exploration. Within a few hours, the headbands were sold out.

“When sales started taking off and I couldn’t pack the orders myself, I had to get some help,” Chine said.

At The ClassRoom, the staff would often hear Chine’s phone make a cha-ching sound notifying her she sold another headband. Everyone would cheer.

“I am so proud of her,” Caggiano said. “I feel so honored to be a part of it from the beginning.”

The headbands were selling well, and it came as a surprise.

“It was one of those things where I wasn’t sure how it was going to take care off,” Caggiano said. “I didn’t know what to expect. It opened my eyes from a business perspective.”

The Manda Bee headband is different because each one is handmade and it is guaranteed to not slip. The patent-pending and secret nonroll technology means the headbands will not roll up at the edges when they are stretched out. The edges also will not fray, and the headbands don’t shrink in the washer or dryer. Not to mention, the headbands come in about any color or pattern imaginable.

The technology behind the headbands has been developed over time, just like the business itself.

Chine really saw her headbands as a business back in 2014 after she had her first stand at the Canfield Fair.

“We were in the Commercial Building, and we had a line out of the door,” Chine said.

Next to her in the building was a businessman selling jewelry and other items. He told her she needed to get a patent and gave her other advice.

“By the end of the fair I [asked] him, how do I do this?” Chine said.

The businessman gave her a list of other fairs to attend and sell her headbands.

In 2015, Chine brought her family and friends to fairs in south Florida, Miami and Columbus. She also sold her headbands at Summerfest music festival in Milwaukee.

Today, it is not just Chine making the headbands one cut and sew at a time at her grandma’s dining-room table. She has 12 contracted employees to help her.

She has four fabric suppliers that all have made-in-America products.

She’s learned where to get products, how to get business and other fundamentals from other entrepreneurs.

Last year, Chine opened a local boutique for her headbands at 124 N. Park Ave. in Warren.

“If it wasn’t for that [businessman] who told me what to do, I wouldn’t have done it,” she said.

In addition to the 133 patterned headbands and 40 different color ones, Manda Bees now has hobo scarves, beanies and charm bracelets.

“We are trying to make things we like,” said Ali Benchwick, Chine’s sister, who manages the Warren boutique. “If we like it, somebody else might like it.”

The goal is to be a brand people recognize. The little bee on the back of the headbands is swarming its way to that goal.

“In four years, she said ‘I think that I can do this,’ selling headbands in a fishbowl to a headband empire,” Caggiano said.

Chine’s message to other entrepreneurs: Put the product out there.

“If there’s something you like to do, do it,” she said.

For information on Chine’s headbands and other products, visit www.mandabees.com.