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Business & Tech

Local Woman's Business Reflects Her Swedish Home

Libertyville resident brings popular European safety products to the United States.

Libertyville resident Elisabeth Hubbard started her business, glimling.com, as a way to introduce and sell beloved products from her homeland of Sweden.

Her trademarked product, the funflector, a reflector designed to attach to clothing, accessories, pets, or bicycles, was inspired by a similar popular Swedish product worn for safety while outdoors at night.

“I grew up in Sweden and everyone had a reflector in their pockets, hard ones on a string. You would pull them out when it was dark so they would dangle," says Hubbard, a mother of three. "I moved here in 2007, and I couldn’t find them, and I couldn’t believe they didn’t exist here.”

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Meanwhile Hubbard was also looking for a job and entertained dozens of ideas to start her own business.

“I’ve always been interested in design and architecture, but I haven’t worked with it,” Hubbard admits. “But that’s the fun part.”

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Incorporating American Aesthetics

She says that she does sketches for the soft vinyl funflectors to get the basic idea and works with another Swedish designer in Naperville to tweak the design.

“I want someone who understands the Scandinavian style,” Hubbard says. “It’s a little less style than an American style, but still needs to appeal to the American general audience.”

Hubbard says she focuses on what Americans want in her designs. Her funflector shapes include baseballs, footballs, peace signs, and paw prints, which she says sell really well to the Libertyville High School customers.

“I get two kinds of reactions,” Hubbard says when she goes into a new market or independent store. “People either say that they’re not out in the dark, and then other people think this is the best thing since sliced bread, so they buy a whole bunch.”

From Design to Product

She says that as momentum built around her product, she started her website www.glimling.com and participated in local fundraisers to get her product in the spotlight. Currently, Hubbard’s funflectors are sold in six states at about 30 stores.  In Libertyville, funflectors are sold at where she says she has her best sales.

After Hubbard designs the funflector, the product is manufactured by a small Swedish company that specializes in vinyl products.

“I send them my drawings and meet with them in the summer to discuss and figure out what my limits are,” she explains. “And I try to stretch the limits to come up with things that my competitors don’t have. I worked in research and development before, so I’m used to thinking that way.”

She says that the process has not been an easy one and that patience and perseverance have been mandatory.

“There will be months where nothing has happened,” she says. “I keep calling people and keep thinking about new designs and eventually all of a sudden things can pop up from nowhere and turn everything around in a day.”

Hubbard says it's important to go with the flow and be open to new ideas or ventures.

“I’m a long-term person so I know where I want to be in a couple of years and that really helps me navigate the little things because I know how they fit into my company and the way it develops,” she says.

Promoting Safety

One of Hubbard's biggest challenges is convincing people that they need them here in America.

“Sweden is very safety conscious,” she says. “You think of the Volvo. It just goes with our mindset.”

She admits that in Sweden people are outside more often, even at night, but that it’s still important here in the States.

“People are outside even if they don’t think about it,” she says explaining that she saw a woman in downtown Libertyville getting out of her car at night. “She had dark clothing, dark stroller, and I remember thinking, ‘For sure, this is someone who thinks they’re not outside after dark.’”

Cheap Life Insurance

“You should think about it this way,” she says. “It’s a really cheap life insurance. They really do save lives. I’ve dug into statistics and there really is a big difference if you compare night time versus day time accidents. In America, there’s a higher rate of accidents in the dark versus Finland.”

As for the name glimling, Hubbard says that it’s a made-up word.

“I want to trigger people’s imagination with it,” says Hubbard. “My family is very into languages and words.”

As for the future of glimling.com, Hubbard says that she has a couple of ideas for more products but no confirmed timing or plans.

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