our story

It started as a feeling most of us know too well — the one where you're running on empty, giving everything to everyone, and quietly wondering when it's your turn.

We launched in 2020, when the world went still and a lot of us were forced to sit with ourselves for the first time in a long time. For some people, that stillness was a relief. For others, it cracked something open.

We were in the second group.

Here's what we believe:

Happiness isn't waiting for you on the other side of a better job, a cleared calendar, or a version of yourself that finally has it together. It's something you have to choose — imperfectly, repeatedly, on the hard days especially.

Most of us were never taught that. We were taught to push through. To earn rest. To put ourselves last and call it strength.

This brand exists to unlearn that.

That belief didn't come from nowhere.

Growing up, Kaleigh struggled with anxiety. For a long time, it felt like something that held her back — like a weight she carried that other people didn't. But as she got older, she started to see it differently. The anxiety that once felt like a flaw turned out to be a quiet superpower: the ability to be prepared, to anticipate what's coming, to read a room and really understand the people in it. It didn't go away. She just learned to recognize what it was actually doing for her.

Joe came to this brand from a different place. He's always been someone who leads with his heart — someone who sees what something could mean to people before they see it themselves. Working on thehappyhoodie didn't just give him a project. It showed him his calling. He's since built his career around it, now working in mental health care — connecting people to the kind of support that saves lives.

It started with a dining room table, a heat press, and a hoodie.

The hoodie is not the point.

It's the reminder. Something soft you pull on in the morning that says: today, I'm in this too. A small, physical act of choosing yourself in a world that will always give you a reason not to.

That's what we make. Not just apparel — a daily practice. A signal to yourself and everyone around you that your wellbeing is not an afterthought.

Because 10% of every profit goes directly to mental health organizations making real support accessible to people who can't always access it on their own. Because we mean it. Because choosing happiness shouldn't require a certain income, a certain zip code, or a certain version of your life.

It should just require the decision.

We built this brand because we needed it too. And we think you deserve to wear how you feel — happy, on purpose, every single day.

Kaleigh & Joe
Co-Founders, The Happy Hoodie