Out of the Purse

Out of the Purse

Startups by Janet Leiser | Senior Editor

Kristy Sobel sells more than handbags at her startup, LaNeige Purse. 'I want LaNeige to become a life link to other people ... We're all given that one opportunity to save others."

Entrepreneur Kristy Sobel reaches out when she meets a stranger who suffers chronic pain and has trouble walking from an accident nine months earlier.

"Oh, you need a fanny pack," she says. "Are you still using crutches? What is your color? Do you like brown, the distressed look? When you wear it, it'll be a sign of hope. It's more than a purse."

It's about women helping women, says the 35-year-old Sobel.

In 2003, Sobel was struggling with back pain from a car wreck when she created a fashionable, functional fanny pack to replace the traditional purse she could no longer carry over her shoulder. Others were soon asking where they could buy the purse she'd made on a sewing machine in her South Tampa home. So she founded LaNeige Purse.

Three years and many surgeries later, the company is thriving. Sobel, founder and CEO, has four employees and four distributors who place the bags in 80 boutiques around the country. She no longer sews the purses herself; she works with a North Florida manufacturer.

LaNeige's sales are expected to hit $420,000 this year, double last year's revenue, she says, adding, "We'll be a multimillion-dollar company before we know it."

Eric Sobel, her husband of 10 years and a general contractor, also helps with the purse business.

It has been several weeks since Sobel's most recent surgery to replace crushed discs in her lower back. The procedure, not covered by health insurance, involved the insertion of plastic discs.

Sobel thinks the worst pain is over, though she must still undergo grueling physical therapy, she says, adding, "Fortunately the stabbing pain I had is gone."

There are no high-pressure sales tactics at her company that has received national media attention. Sobel was thrilled when Jessica Simpson was photographed carrying a LaNeige purse in US Weekly magazine.

Later this year, Sobel plans to use profit from her business to start LaNeige Foundation and staff a helpline for women in crisis.

"A lot of women I speak to, so many feel alone and trapped with their pain," she says. "They feel they're the only one out there feeling this, and they're not."

Sobel understands their pain.

"I think LaNeige is the reason I survived," she says. "So many times you don't know if you're going to be able to make it through the next day."

Then she receives letters and calls from others.

Her goal, she says, isn't to be recognized as a famous purse designer. She wants to help others, and her business allows her to do that.

"The finances will come if I do all the right things for the right reasons," she says.

Don't expect LaNeige (French for snow and the name of Sobel's white Maltese) ever to become a mass producer of hand bags. Sobel's goals are loftier.

"I want to give women hope that there's nothing we can't accomplish no matter what stands in front of us," she says. "My biggest thing is I want LaNeige to become a life link to other people out there. I think we're all given that one opportunity to save others."