Years ago, I had written thousands of words about how these hair extensions came to be. I lost that version while editing, and perhaps I was not ready to tell the whole story yet. Now, more than twenty years after the first experiments in my own damaged hair, I am.

​Soft Bond Strands® did not begin as a business plan. It began because I had a problem I could not stop trying to solve.

In 2004, after years of bleaching, my hair had broken substantially. I wanted the length and fullness I had lost, but I did not know where to begin. My husband at the time had worked as a “Chippendales” performer and had spent years around female entertainers. He knew that many women used hair extensions to create the full, glamorous hair I was trying to recover, and he was the person who first told me about them.

I found a Minneapolis salon offering a strand-by-strand pinch-braid method and paid approximately $800 for my first installation. At first, the extensions made me self-conscious and for the first few days, I hid my long hair in a ponytail. Laughable, because once I became accustomed to them, I loved them. They gave me back something I thought I had lost, and with that, something I could never have: beautiful, long, thick, flowing hair.

The problem was, after about three months, the attachment points began to show and an entirely new set was needed. I could not sustain that expense. So I began asking a question that would quietly direct the next twenty years of my life: Could I find a way to create this result for myself?

The do-it-yourself choices available then were limited. Many involved gluing wefts directly into the hair. My oldest daughter was a teenager and experimenting with extensions of her own, and we saw visible hair loss where adhesive had been used. Clip-ins felt heavy and uncomfortable to both of us. Fusion extensions used hot glue and required chemicals, oily solvents and tools for removal. When I tried them, I felt almost claustrophobic, as though something had been locked into my hair that I could not remove myself.

I have always been like that. Even when I have artificial nails applied, I begin wanting them off within days. I needed an extension method that felt flexible, lightweight and manageable, something I could live in without feeling trapped by it.

I did not want a quick costume change. I wanted the natural-looking, strand-by-strand result I loved, with meaningful wear, comfort and a process I could understand and control.

The earliest versions were not miracles. One might last four weeks. I would change something and perhaps the next would last six. Every adjustment had to be tested in my own hair, which meant waiting weeks or months before I could understand whether an idea had actually improved anything.

Something would fail and I would have to learn why. I studied how the hair was sectioned, how the strands moved, how the attachment behaved during everyday life, how care products affected it and what happened over time. There was no established training for the system because the system did not yet exist. I was learning by wearing it.

By 2005 and 2006, I had the beginning of something workable. I started sharing it with other do-it-yourself wearers in online message boards. We called the bond TemBond because it seemed temporary compared with fusion. The complete home system and kits became known as ManeMaxx, my earliest brand identity.

​But the word temporary eventually stopped describing what I was creating. As the method improved, what mattered was that the bond remained soft: flexible, comfortable and lightweight. The name Soft Bond came from the experience of wearing it. Later, when I opened WEST COAST HAIR®, Soft Bond Strands® became the name that finally fit the system itself.

Those early ideas attracted attention. A product feature connected with the Rachael Ray show introduced the concept to a wider audience, and conversations with producers showed me that other people could see what I was trying to build. I considered patent protection for the method, but a patent would have required public disclosure. I chose instead to protect the formula as a trade secret and continued improving it privately.

In 2011, a former thirteen-year CEO of Regis Corporation offered me six figures for the creation. He saw its potential. I was not ready to let it go. The product still felt like something I needed to finish, understand and protect before I could place it in someone else’s hands.

In 2010, my first grandson was born. My daughter wanted to find full-time work, and it broke my heart to think she might have to leave her baby in daycare—or with me every day—and miss the experience of being home with her own son.

I began imagining a different possibility: What if I turned the system I had developed into work we could do together? I taught her the installation process and we began seeing clients from my home. When my younger daughter turned sixteen, she joined us as well.

In 2012, I created WEST COAST HAIR® as the professional service business built around my Soft Bond method and opened our first studio in Downtown White Bear Lake, Minnesota. I recorded a radio commercial, planned a grand opening and welcomed clients into a business that had once existed only through experiments in my own hair.

My daughters earned income through their client work, but behind the scenes I was doing nearly everything: installations, websites, marketing, booking, client communication, scheduling and the endless problem-solving that comes with building something from nothing. My husband helped with moves, locations and practical support. There was no large company behind us. There was a family and an invention that kept asking more of me.

A makeup artist working with an actress invited me to Los Angeles for an installation. I loved the area, and one client slowly became a small California client list. My daughters and I began flying out every month or two to work.

In 2015, we moved the Minnesota business to the LynLake neighborhood of Minneapolis. Within two years, we had outgrown expanded studio space and moved again, this time to a storefront near West Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue in Uptown. That location brought a new level of visibility and growth.

But growth was never only about adding clients. Every appointment gave me information. I compared the installations that performed beautifully with the ones that did not. Five-star reviews told me what people loved; the occasional one-star review told me where I still had work to do. I could not dismiss the difficult experience simply because many others were successful. I wanted to know what had happened and how the system, instructions, screening, care or support could be improved.


​That real-client experience became part of the invention. Soft Bond Strands® was not simply a jar. It was becoming a complete method: product, placement, education, maintenance, removal, compatible care and responsible use.

In 2018, I learned that certain silicone-heavy hair products could interfere with the bond’s performance. Asking clients to avoid a product was not enough for me; I wanted to give them something appropriate to use instead. That led me to develop Just Clean Hair™, a clean, compatible hair-care line designed to support the extension process and the natural hair wearing it.

​As the product, technique, care and education improved together, we encountered fewer problems and saw increasingly consistent, long-term wear. The system had moved far beyond those early four-week and six-week tests, but I continued watching, learning and refining.

Our California client list continued to grow. After a man attempted to break into my hotel suite during one of my work trips, I decided I needed a permanent, secure place to serve clients there. My daughter found salon suites being planned inside the Rodeo Collection on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. We secured a space and waited nearly a year for construction.

I planned every detail, purchased what we would need, signed leases, arranged an apartment and sent my belongings west. I opened the studio excited about everything we had built and everything that might come next.

It was open for four weeks.

Personally, life was already unraveling. My father was dying. My marriage was ending. My daughters had stepped away from the business for other ventures. Then my father died, COVID arrived and both cities shut down. I spent much of the following year alone in Los Angeles, without my family, my familiar home or even one of my cats to keep me company. The Beverly Hills studio served only a handful of clients. It would never truly open again.

By approximately June 2021, after the Minneapolis unrest and the continuing uncertainty around operating a public location, I closed the West Lake storefront as well. Between the Beverly Hills build-out, leases, living expenses and months without normal business, I estimate the loss at approximately $180,000.

​I had spent fifteen years developing a product and building the businesses around it, and then watched the structure collapse in front of me. I was not ready to rebuild another storefront. For a time, maintaining what remained was all I could manage.

I continued serving some clients through private appointments, but I also needed time to heal and understand what the previous years had taken from me. The work became quieter. So did I.

Eventually, I returned to the question that had started everything: What did I need when my own hair was broken and the available options did not work for me?

I had successfully installed my own extensions for years. The product was already strong, but in 2023 and again in 2025, I made small refinements to the technique that made the complete process even better. Anyone who wore an earlier version experienced a stage in its development. I now had the benefit of two decades of personal wear, thousands of hours of client experience and years of learning what people needed before, during and after an installation.

Going back to the beginning did not mean starting over. It meant returning to the people who first understood the idea—do-it-yourself wearers—with the finished education and support that did not exist when I began.

Soft Bond Strands® is not meant to be an unexplained product placed in someone’s hands with the hope that she will figure it out. The bond is only one part of the result. Preparation matters. Strand selection matters. Placement, maintenance, removal, compatible care and knowing when not to proceed all matter.

That is why I created the Soft Bond Strands® DIY Kit + Course as a complete system. The course teaches the method step by step. The kit provides the tools and care system intended to work together. The DIY Collective gives customers a place for continued learning and support. The Lobby gives people a place to begin, ask questions and understand whether this approach is appropriate for them.

I am not promising that one method is right for every person or that individual results will be identical. I am offering what I once needed: a carefully developed, strand-by-strand option created with natural-hair protection, comfort, education and responsible use in mind.

The first people receiving this completed system are not simply customers at the beginning of a launch. They are Founding Members because they are helping reopen a story that began in the earliest DIY message boards and continued through every client, studio, setback and refinement that followed.

Some may remember TemBond or ManeMaxx. Others may be meeting Soft Bond Strands® for the first time. Both are entering at an important moment: the point when I am finally placing the product, the education and the complete support system into customers’ hands together.

I hope we build more than a place to buy hair extensions. I hope The Lobby becomes a thoughtful place to learn. I hope the DIY Collective becomes a generous community of people helping one another use the system responsibly. I hope the Founder Release gives the earliest members a genuine place in what Soft Bond Strands® becomes next.

There may be a professional release in the future. WEST COAST HAIR® may grow again through studios, salons or new locations. TWIST Hair Care may expand the clean care system that began because of the bond. I can see pieces of the plans I held before COVID finding their way back to me, but I do not need to force all of them into existence at once.

For now, I am beginning where I began: with a woman at home who wants longer, fuller, natural-looking hair and needs someone to thoroughly show her what to do.

At heart, I am a creative guide, a caring coach and a teacher. I created Soft Bond Strands® because I needed a better answer for myself. I kept developing it because I believed other people deserved a better-supported option too.

After five years of rest and healing, I know I should not let this go. I have something people may love and live with for many years, just as I have. I am excited, optimistic and ready to place it into their hands.

This is not the end of the story I once lost.

It is the beginning I came back to.
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