From a saltwater-soaked shower in Guam to a thriving women-owned business, the story of Rip Tie Hair is one of curiosity, grit, and a roommate who said the right thing at the right time.
By Greg Rollett, Grommet
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In 2018, Sarah Fox had what most people would consider a pretty good life. She worked at a scuba shop on the island of Guam, where the ocean was warm and the diving was constant. Multiple days every week, she was in the water. What she could not get comfortable with was what the Pacific did to her hair on the way back up. “Back in 2018, working at a scuba shop in Guam, my hair was a constant battle,” she says. “It would get so tangled at times that I had to cut out entire rat’s nests just to manage it.”
She tried everything the beauty aisle had to offer: hours in the shower with conditioner and a detangling brush, standard hair ties of every variety. Nothing fixed the problem in a lasting way. So she started experimenting with elastics, combining them in configurations she had not seen before. Before long, she was making hair ties for her long-haired scuba diving friends. They loved them. She noted this and moved on.
Rip Tie Hair launched on Grommet on September 18, 2025, and has since earned 744 upvotes. The patent-pending 3-pack retails for $21, or $16.80 with the upvote discount.
A Social Worker, an Ocean, and a Decision to Change Course
Most people who learn Sarah Fox holds a Master of Social Work are a little surprised. It is not a credential that immediately maps onto “product inventor” or “e-commerce founder.” But Sarah sees it differently. “The most unexpected thing about my background is that I didn’t come from business at all,” she says. “I have a Masters in Social Work, which taught me to deeply understand people’s needs. This skill turned out to be just as valuable in creating Rip Ties as any business course.”
She eventually left her job to return to school, and during that transition she needed a way to cover expenses. The hair ties she had been making by hand for her scuba friends came back to mind. “Rip Tie Hair started as a creative way to help my family cover expenses,” she says, “but over the course of my education, it turned into a business that took on a life of its own.”
When Braids Become the Enemy
As Sarah dug into how athletes and outdoor people manage their hair, she found something counterintuitive: braids, the go-to solution for generations of active women, are actually part of the problem. Individual strands crossing over each other create friction. Friction creates tangles and, over time, breakage. The conventional solution was causing the very damage it was supposed to prevent.
“I discovered that the solution I had been using, braids, was actually part of the problem. When strands cross over each other, they create friction, which leads to breakage and snarls. That’s when it hit me: what if hair could be kept contained, secure, and all in one direction?”
Sarah Fox, Founder of Rip Tie Hair
That idea became the structural foundation of Rip Tie Hair: a tangle-free design that holds every strand parallel, not interlocked.
One by One, Then All at Once
For a while, Sarah made every Rip Tie by hand. One at a time. That approach worked until customer demand moved faster than two hands could keep up.
Finding the right manufacturer proved to be its own education. She worked through multiple factories, collecting samples, adjusting specifications, running tests. She found one that seemed to meet her standards and placed a full order. When the shipment arrived, the product was wrong. Entirely, unsellably wrong. “It was so discouraging at the time,” she says, “but that experience clarified to me how important the smallest details are in manufacturing, and set the bar for the Rip Ties standard.”
That failed order hardened something in how she approaches the product today. Every element gets scrutiny: the natural rubber elastic, the patent-pending construction, the multicolor packs. The three colorways in the signature set are named Dawn Patrol, Rippled Water, and Sunset, each a nod to the same ocean that first made the product necessary. These are not marketing decisions. They are details made meaningful by the work it took to get them right.
The Roommate Who Changed the Trajectory
Sarah Fox did not have a mentor who flew in with capital and connections. She had a roommate.
“The first person to believe in Rip Ties was actually my roommate. I made her one, and she looked at me and said, ‘You could sell these, you know. I would buy one.’”
Sarah Fox
That simple, unguarded reaction was the first signal that the idea had legs. Before a Grommet listing, before a manufacturer, before the failed order, there was a roommate in an apartment trying something on and saying what she honestly thought.
What a Firefighter Taught Her About the Product
Success, for Sarah Fox, is not a revenue figure. It is a specific kind of email.
One of the early messages that shifted her understanding of what she had built came from a female firefighter. Her hair had been a persistent problem on the job, catching in gear, pulling at critical moments, adding friction to an already demanding physical environment. After trying Rip Tie, she wrote to say the problem was finally solved. Then more women in physically demanding jobs sent versions of the same story.
“It makes me proud, because while hair accessories are often seen as frivolous, Rip Ties is helping women in tough, demanding jobs feel more comfortable and capable,” she says.
The Grommet community brought customers she had never explicitly designed for: motorcycle riders, hikers, equestrians, competitive swimmers, parents of young athletes who needed a tie that survived full days of motion. She had built the product for the ocean. It turned out the ocean was just the first application.
The Life She Is Building
Sarah Fox runs Rip Tie Hair alongside her family, including a toddler whose schedule does not negotiate. The hours have not gotten shorter. If anything, entrepreneurship has added to them. But they have become her own.
“It’s not fewer hours, in fact, I work more than I ever did before, but it gives me the flexibility to adjust when my toddler needs me. That ability to be both an entrepreneur and a present mom is priceless.”
Sarah Fox
On hard days, she thinks about her son and the firefighter’s email, and about the woman she was in Guam spending hours with a detangling brush convinced there had to be a better answer.
Being part of a community like Grommet, one that leads with story rather than search rank, fits the kind of business she set out to build. “Being part of a community that uplifts small makers is energizing and validating,” she says. “It’s a reminder that what we create matters, and that independent brands can thrive when people come together to support creativity and quality.”
She started with a problem she had in the ocean. She ended up solving one shared by firefighters, runners, and girls playing sports on sweaty afternoons. That is what a good product does.
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