Columnist: Business idea might have seemed loopy, but it’s paid off

Just call her Professor Hoops.

Kim Newberry, a 36-year-old former college English teacher, makes custom hula hoops in her Cascade home for sale nationwide.

She’s an active twirler herself, often joining a group of hoopers at Memorial Park in Manitou Springs.

That’s right — the wacky fun fad of childhood has gone to the adults.

“It’s fitness,” she says. “Back in the ’50s it was more of a toy thing. Now it’s like sports equipment. It helps core muscles, the stomach and balance.”

That is, if you can do it long enough.

With persistence and the right hoop size, she says even those with two left feet, like her, can master it.

Hooping has been around since ancient times with rings of vines or bamboo. The word “hula” was added because the hip motion evoked images of Hawaiian hula dancing.

In 1958, Wham-O trademarked the name and launched it as a toy, triggering a mass craze.

The fad has been revived as exercise at gyms and dance at nightclubs.

For Newberry, it was a way out of a slump when her husband Dave, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, deployed to Iraq in 2005 and she quit teaching at the University of Phoenix.

With two kids at her hip and no papers to grade, she joined the Manitou hoopers and saw a need for hoops to fit adult sizes and tastes.

Her hoops average $20 to $30, in designs from Broncos colors and camouflage to bridal lace and muted earth tones.

“Some people order hoops to match their living room decor,” she says.

When she set up shop (www.hoopdydoo.com) in October, her mom kindly told her: “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“It sounds ‘out there,’” she admits.

Maybe so, but it has paid off. “I’m in the black.”

She has made about 200 hoops so far.

The challenge is “converting the doubters,” a throwback to her classroom days. “As an English teacher, I’d watch people discover what they didn’t expect to do. Those who’d say, ‘I was a terrible writer. I never knew I could do that. I didn’t think I’d like that novel.’”

The assignment she gives now is to read the instruction booklet of tips and tricks that comes with hoops.

The kitchen of her rural, centuryold home is her workstation, and the wine cellar is the storeroom. The hoops are bubble-wrapped for shipping. Her son Luke, 4, and daughter Claire, 6, pitch in.

She starts with heavy-duty irrigation pipe from the hardware store. She cuts it to fit, fills with beads or marbles or water, then fires up the Wagner heat gun to 1,350 degrees to weld the pipe into hoops, which she wraps with tape.

“Making hoops is so much harder on the body than hooping,” she says. “You get into repetitive motion. It’s tough on the elbow and shoulders.”

She unwinds by hooping.

“For me it’s like a nicotine addiction,” she says. “If I don’t do it I get grouchy.”

Tell me your stories: 636-0253 or andrea.brown@gazette.com.