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The Astral Hoops Story![]() B.J.Owner / Inventor / Hoopsmith Stef and I were gifted our first hula hoops in the spring of 2007 while attending Toast!, the Arizona regional Burning Man event. We were instantly hooked. With a background in computer programming and electrical engineering, it wasn't long before my geek side kicked in and I started work on an LED hoop. Not wanting to create just any LED hoop, I jumped straight in to trying out different ideas for controlling the LEDs with custom circuitry. Those very first hoops were a little rough around the edges, but they were truly unique in their functions.
By the Spring of 2010 my obsession with working on these LED hoops had led to the creation of some nicely refined designs and Astral Hoops was born. Stef and I felt that hooping had added much to our lives. The creation of Astral Hoops allowed us to take that a step further and trade in our corporate careers for something that we had genuine love and passion for. We also saw it as an opportunity to throw in our contribution the hooping and flow arts community. In the beginning we built the hoops with the help of some very dedicated friends at our house in Tucson, Arizona. It wasn't long before Astral Hoops had completely taken over the entire house. We even had to get rid of the living room couch for more work space. In March of 2012 we made the move to Denver, Colorado and opened up shop in a 2100sqft studio space in the RiNo arts district. A couple of our Tucson hoopsmiths made the move with us and continue to be a very valuable part of our shop. We also took on new Denver additions to our team. It takes a special kind of talent to make an Astral Hoop and we were enthusiastic to be able to assemble an extremely talented team of hoopsmiths having both artistic and technical super powers. Our goal with Astral Hoops is to help promote health, community, happiness, and innovation by supporting and encouraging hooping, flow arts, play, technology, wonder, and the transformational communities they are a part of. One of the best parts of doing what we do is the overwhelming support we feel from so many of you. Thank you for helping us to get to where we are today and for helping us along the path to infinite possibilities for the future. We're all creating this together.
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