Girls do it, boys do it, even moms and dads do it, that’s the story of, that’s the glory of hoops.  Retro is in, and for many the Hula-Hoop is a symbol of childhood in a simpler time.  The playful colors, the swirling and twirling, conjure up fond memories of school recess and summer nights. 

U Hip is a new upstart company, owned and operated by the four children of a local Safety Harbor family.  It began as a summer project spurred on by their home-schooling mother, Jodi.

Jodi challenged her four children, all born and raised in Safety Harbor,  to come up with a viable business idea which would give her a vehicle to teach them everything about running a business - from product selection and design, to sales and marketing.  Her kids had been modeling and acting for years, and had appeared in over 50 commercials promoting various products from Kodak Cameras to Carvel Ice Cream.  In the Fall of 2008 the kids will featured weekly on “Banana Bread”, a nationally syndicated TV show on PBS. So the more she thought about it the more she felt it was time for them to design and promote a creation of their own. 

What they came up with was no lemonade stand.  The children - Hunter 12, Victoria 9, Elizabeth 6, and Lily 3 - chose to ride the tide of the renewed Hula-Hoop craze. 

Jodi’s oldest daughter, Victoria, loved her hula hoop but didn’t like how it always broke, got bent out of shape and eventually became unusable.  She told her mother that the children wanted to make hula hoops that were unbreakable, stylish and fun.  The U-Hip hoops have a one year warranty.