Hounds of Lobe was started in 2020. Shortly after the coffee shop that I was working in closed due to the pandemic, I found myself unemployed for the first time since I was 15. To fill the hours that I wasn’t playing the Sims, I - like so many people - took up a hobby. I ordered a few bricks of polymer clay, some earring hooks, a cheap pasta machine, and some geometric cutters. Visions of being a small business maven danced in my head. This was the first day of the rest of my life as the head of an earring empire. The resulting earrings were…laughably hideous. I put up all of the supplies and vowed to never touch them again. It was back to my Sims for me.

Cut to December of that year. I was done with the semester, still unemployed, and needing something to anchor me. I pulled out to clay and approached it this time without the notion of going viral on Instagram. I let myself play, and I gave myself permission to be a beginner. The result this time was something that I would actually wear!

In the spring, I did my first in-person market, launched an Instagram, and continued to grow in this medium. The rest, as they say, is history.