For the last 12 years I have been making threader hoops that close with an ingenious coil that travels around the hoop and over the opening when the hoop is put on the ear, making it secure and visually exciting. I called them Teslas, after the Tesla Coil, an invention of the scientist and showman, Nickolai Tesla. At the time, the Tesla car manufacturer, owned by Elon Musk, was doing prototypes. I’d never heard of it.  Over the years I have wanted to change the name but it had stuck—people referred lovingly to their hoops as Teslas—people searched for them online using this name, and I was reluctant to change it. 

When Mike joined the shop, I showed him how to make the coil-closure hoops and he improved the design over the last 8 years making each pair by hand. Over the last 14 years, I have seen many of my other designs copied by places like Wish—but the coil hoops must be made by hand in a specific way—making them near impossible to copy. 

Sadly, Nikolai’s surname is now tainted by sociopathic men in power. From now on you will see us call our hoops Orbitals. (We are changing every mention of Teslas, but it’s taking a while, so if you see an artefact remaining, we are working on this.)

For those of you wonderful customers who have been with us from the beginning, you know Feral Strumpet has weathered many storms. Through it all, our customers are our lifeline! 

Small businesses in the UK have been up against a lot. Over the past 14 years, we’ve met huge challenges and threats and tried to survive them creatively: 

• The hostile take over of Etsy, now run for shareholders rather than artists and makers. 
• The introduction of extortionate algorithms on social media. This affects the visibility of small scale artists, musicians and writers especially. 
• When Brexit took the UK out of the EU, we lost over a third of our customers—all European friends who could no longer afford our pieces, now subject to exorbitant customs fees and delays. 
• Other small business in our network have folded. For instance, our main supplier of findings– ethical, family-run and with whom we have worked for over 10 years–went out of business.
• The social media landscape, run by oligarchs, now requires difficult ethical choices.

I am disabled and manage my energy limiting condition and chronic pain well, but adapting to these changes has taken all my energy.  The last thing that bothered me was the name of my unique hoop design—now called The Orbital. If you have read this far, thank you. Just know that every time you support a small maker–be that buying what we make or sharing it with others by word of mouth or online, you help keep us going. Without you, we would not be here!

How do you wear your Orbitals? Send me your pics! Let’s celebrate the persistence of Strumpets and the Orbital Hoop—my most well loved design!