♪♪ My name is Jen Kranz and I'm originally from, well I was born in Montana but I pretty much grew up from the age of 9 in Las Vegas.

My name is Kate Vigmostad and I grew up here in Fairfield.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Jen Kranz: I have been roller skating since I was little.

Some of my earliest memories from living in Montana are at the roller skating rink.

I must have been in like the first or second grade or so.

And then I went to the roller skating rink in Las Vegas growing up.

And then in my pre-teen and teen years I was a rollerblader.

Kate Vigmostad: Roller skating has always been just like a fun hobby of mine.

But once the pandemic started I got really interested in pursuing it more as a serious hobby I would say.

♪♪ Jen Kranz: We met, Kate was having, she was hosting a skate and hang event, just trying to find other roller skaters in town so we could all get together and I went to her event, even though I didn't know her and I met her there and I think we became fast friends.

And I think almost instantly we started talking about some form of business.

And it has kind of just, the conversation started developing and we met in June and we started the business in August.

Kate Vigmostad: The timing was kind of right as the pandemic was starting and I was home.

I think a lot of people made big shifts.

But just got really passionate and excited about doing something new.

There are so many elements to it that were exciting and fulfilling for me.

And then met Jen and I think both of us were kind of just prime and ready to start a business.

Jen Kranz: We get most of our sales from e-commerce, from the website.

And so we do a lot of shipping of roller skates.

We do basically everything, it's just Kate and I.

We shoot all of our own videos.

We're doing the marketing, we're doing the website, we're shipping the skates, we're at the pop-up booths, we're running our store.

So it's a lot.

We do have this gold one.

It's pretty sparkly.

This one is also sparkly.

Kate Vigmostad: I mean, what's really cool about selling roller skates, I've always said this, is instead of just selling like a piece of clothing that is fun or fashionable, you're selling something that people then get to take and learn and do something with.

♪♪ Jen Kranz: When the weather is nicer we have our skate group, which has grown a little bit since we started the business.

And it's something that we actually had going, Kate actually started it with the skate and hang.

And it has grown over time.

We try to do, in the summertime we try to do skate and hang every Thursday where we have people come into the shop and meet here and we usually do like a small lesson for some new skaters and then we'll go out across the street to the square and we'll just skate around on the square.

Sometimes we go to the basketball courts at a local park.

And we just get together and try to teach each other moves or just skate around a little bit and have some music going and some snacks and it's a good time.

♪♪ Kate Vigmostad: I feel like, especially in the beginning, for skating roller skates it just feels like joy, you just feel like you have, like we have wings on our logo just because that feeling of flying, that freedom that you get, you can, it's a style thing also so you can express yourself with the way your skates look, you can dress them up, you can wear them to accentuate your clothing style, you can move and feel free.

♪♪ Jen Kranz: Some of my fondest memories are roller skating when I was younger and I really just wanted to get back to that space, freedom.

I think that we named the company Volition because I think especially a lot of moms when they have kids they kind of lose that for a while.

And so I think it's really awesome and a large portion of our customer base are also moms and so we love that we can encourage moms to connect with that childhood self.

♪♪ Jen Kranz: We're selling roller skates, but we're selling a lot more.

We're encouraging people to just really be themselves and I get really proud of that aspect of it.

♪♪ Kate Vigmostad: Yeah, I mean, I think I feel super proud of us that we have done what we have.

I think it's like kind of in awe of oh my gosh, I can't believe we created this.

But definitely very excited and inspired to keep going and see where we do get.

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