How CuffedUp Evolved Into a Functional & Fashionable Styling Tool

Ahh, the simple slap bracelet. A coveted 90’s kids toy that was never quite able to make a comeback.

It’s not surprising when someone sees CuffedUp and thinks it’s a slap bracelet. But it is inaccurate. Watch this video where we directly compare the two (even on live TV!) 

Here’s a secret: we wish slap bracelets would’ve worked! If they did, we wouldn’t of needed to put up thousands of dollars, dedicate months of our lives, and start a company as newlyweds (yikes!). We wouldn’t have needed to make tons of prototypes all for the purpose of keeping sleeves rolled. 

And after all that work, we definitely wouldn’t go out of the way to lie about it and sell something that already existed. We’re young, but not totally clueless.

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Never would we have thought that one year after getting married, we would place orders for hundreds of slap bracelets and play with them all day. Add in the detail that this was all in pursuit of a business idea I had…

 I would’ve laughed in your face- rolling sleeves, seriously?

But there we were, harassing asking strangers if we could measure their forearms for ‘science’, cutting up and testing slap bracelets on a Saturday night, and being side-eyed by sales associates while we unfolded every shirt in the store to measure the cuff length. 

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Despite all of our testing, we couldn’t find a slap bracelet that would curve correctly or hold any fabric up. The ‘roll’ looked like an unnatural piece of metal stuck in your shirt & totally unnatural. 

We started improvising. We used liquid silicone, magnets, duct tape- anything we could make a robust prototype that worked. Here’s a few more pics…

Finally, our prototypes started to turn into manufactured samples. Like this sparkle version using an older design of ours…(sidenote: we are for sure launching this colors)! 

There were a lot of variables in play. We had to know what kind of fabrics our customers would be using and all of the tricky sleeve situations they would encounter. We had to learn about different kinds of bi-stable steel springs, silicones, and inks. 

As we refined our product, our decisions came down to the milligram & millimeter. We were ruthless perfectionists. And, unlike this bird, we were not playing into “imposter syndrome.” 

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CuffedUp may look familiar, but it is entirely unique. Despite how simple CuffedUp looks, we did face obstacles through the invention process. Like…

Why the do our prototypes work on silk, but not denim? How do we fix this without making it tighter?

What was the magic length that would fit most people? 28 cm? 28.3 cm? 28.5cm?

Can we increase tension leveraging the fabric on the shirt, instead of making a tighter product? 

Why have I dedicated my young adult life to rolled sleeves? Why did I even go to college?

 Kidding on that last one, kind of.

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CuffedUp really works- it's our brainchild and has evolved to be more than what we ever imagined. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing how people react to finding a product that solves a problem as simple as rolled sleeves. Hey, we loved them so much, we decided to get them on video! See the reactions for yourself... 

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