Well, that depends on if you mean the beginning of LongLocks HairSticks or the LongLocks HairSticks Boutique.

LongLocks HairSticks came first, of course.  I had been fanatical about long hair and hair sticks for *years.*  I went looking for hair sticks on the Web and with very rare exception what I found was really poor quality stuff.  When I won a particularly expensive and fancy hand made pair on eBay that I bought for myself for my birthday, and discovered they were really poorly made when I finally received them, I decided I'd had it and I was going to make my own sticks at a level of quality I thought the hair I'd put so much work into deserved.  I had been a textile artist for several years by that point, and had done jewelry repair for an antique dealer for some time, so I knew I had the design skills and technical know-how to do it right.

Shortly after I started making hair sticks I was showing my first designs to the subscribers to the original LongLocks listserv (a listserv I started many years ago for the "care, appreciation and feeding of long hair on both sexes" and Karen Shelton, president and CEO of the Hair Boutique (http://www.hairboutique.com) fell in love with them.  She ordered a couple pair as samples and she liked them so much she asked if she could carry them in the Hair Boutique... and my cottage industry was born.  I created a small website in 2000 that directed people to the Hair Boutique to find my designs and that was the very first one-page rendition of the LongLocks HairSticks site.  After the Hair Boutique had been selling my stuff for a year or so, Karen had instilled in me enough confidence to venture out on my own and the official LongLocks HairSticks Boutique was born in February of 2001.  Back then I only had eight or so styles of sticks (anyone remember ShimmerStix and PosyStix?) and there was no informational content on the site at all.  I then made the decision that not only was I going to offer my designs for sale in the LongLocks HairSticks Boutique, but I was going to freely share all the knowledge I'd gained about growing and maintaining long hair with anyone who was looking for the information, and we've been growing steadily ever since!  My main mission in life is to change archaic attitudes about long hair, especially on professional and older women... and men too!  

That's my story and I'm sticking to it ;)