Student turns traffic cones into fashion

When nature-loving Nick Kingsbury set out for a walk through his Huntington Station neighborhood on a July day in 2008, he ended up stumbling upon a traffic cone and the answer to a business puzzle.

Kingsbury, who was 19 at the time, had been entertaining the idea of a line of unique, handmade jewelry for men that would also be conversation pieces. A discarded, scuffed bright orange cone caught his eye as he walked along. He grabbed the abandoned rubber, carried it home and made himself a bracelet. His friends liked it so much that Kingsbury made six more -- free of charge -- for each of them.

"I was surprised by the positive feedback I was getting for my bracelet," he said, adding that he "saw it as a good sign, that maybe traffic cones could seriously make good conversation pieces."

By April 2009, Kingsbury, with financial help from his parents, invested $8,000 into a traffic cone jewelry business to cover its patent, website and search-engine optimization. Today, Hazard Line offers 100 jewelry and clothing accessory designs handmade by Kingsbury using new and old traffic cones.

Products range from an Electric Heart necklace to flashy, durable belts that come in blue, orange, lime and forest green and are priced from $7 to $29. They are sold at Ripe Art Gallery in Greenlawn, online (haz ardline.com) and at Maxwell's superstore in upstate Oneonta.

Kingsbury outlines the designs himself using a box cutter and a woodcarving chisel. Each piece takes him about 10 to 30 minutes to make.

He orders traffic cones online and created a Vintage series from donated, used cones. Kingsbury said 30 percent of Vintage profits go toward his nonprofit organization, Project Green, which last spring volunteered to clean up Jayne's Hill in Huntington, collecting 100 pounds of garbage from the trails.

Kingsbury's foray into entrepreneurship despite a national recession and high unemployment is not uncommon, according to those who track such data. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., one of the world's largest foundations devoted to entrepreneurship, found that in the midst of the recession, U.S. entrepreneurial activity in 2009 rose to its highest rate in 14 years.

"A recession actually turns out to be a great time to start a business," said Nick Seguin, manager of entrepreneurship at the foundation.

Kingsbury, who has an undergraduate degree in economics, said he was not concerned about starting his business, recession or not.

"I wasn't extremely worried, because I put very little money down," he said. "I didn't have a lot to lose. Plus, businesses take time to grow. I had in my head that eBay existed for seven years before it got popular, and look where it is now."

Hazard Line's online presence has attracted buyers in California, Georgia, Illinois and Texas. Most are college age. Kingsbury, who is now 22, said his "one-man band" business also has benefited from the advice of Donald Trump.

"My confidence boost comes from his audio book," said Kingsbury, who completed his undergraduate studies in three years and will start his second year of law school at Hofstra in August. He hopes to practice real-estate law. "I listened to that three-hour book eight times in one semester, which motivated me to get the patent and take the risk."

Kingsbury's creative juices have earned him about $2,500, he said. "You want anything you do to go as big as possible," Kingsbury said. "I would love to see Hazard Line go as big as possible, and I'll always work to maintain it and improve it."