We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lauren Reckert. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lauren below.

Lauren, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Naming a business is much harder than I thought it would be. I thought I could pick something quickly and just move on with the business. I was wrong. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect name. Nothing sounded right. And then I had to think about a logo and colors for branding, along with the business name. Did I want something classic or popular? Or maybe something that was neutral and appealed to everyone? This was by far the hardest part of setting up my business.

While trying to come up with generic names that sounded catchy, I kept coming back to sunshine, sunsets, and the beautiful colors in the sky. Watching a sunset or sunrise is one of my favorite times of day. While I’m helping my kids get ready for school in the morning, we always stop and look at the sunrise. The colors are so beautiful in the morning. We will also catch every sunset we can. My love for these times of day inspired the name of my business. I tried many different combos of sunset, sunrise, bright colors, etc. and ultimately settled on Sunlit Skies Apparel.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m fairly new to the apparel business. I spent most of my career as a project manager. About 3 years ago I got a bad concussion that resulted in me not being able to work at all. I have been through doctors and therapy and have not made a lot of progress. I was looking for something to do to help bring in extra income since I’m a single mom of 4. It needed to be some kind of business that I could work on my own hours, depending on my symptoms. I have always loved the idea of designing my own shirts. I looked into it and started my own business doing custom apparel like shirts, hats, hoodies etc. I can create custom designs for family vacations, sports teams, bridal parties, etc. I enjoy creating unique designs for my clients. I pride myself on my integrity and work ethic. I have a high sense of urgency and like to get my orders done as quickly as possible so my clients are happy.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My biggest obstacle has been my concussion and trying to overcome my symptoms to be able to function again. At the beginning, I wasn’t able to function or get out of bed. I have slowly conditioned myself to be able to work on a computer again for small periods of time. I am still working on reading and doing things that require a lot of eye movements. Just being able to get through the day is a challenge some days, but I push through to try to build this business so that I can provide for my kids.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Again, my concussion is a huge pivot in my life. I was loving my career as a project manager. It has a skill set that allowed me to excel and move up quickly. I loved it. That all changed in the matter of minutes when a car door hit me in the back of the head. I was no longer able to work on a computer, look at any screens, function and be able to take care of my kids. It has been a long road to recovery but it is getting better as time goes on. As this happened, I had to try to find something that I could generate some kind of income with but also allowed me to have rest days and go at my own pace. Being a business owner provides me that flexibility.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sunlitskiesapparelco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunlit.skies.apparel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094557546366