We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Ritter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Jessica and I saw the need for fashionable roller skates that are fairly priced. We weren’t happy that the current brands out there were using subpar materials just to make things affordable. We wanted to offer budget friendly components that are still higher quality so beginners wouldn’t have to spend more money just to have to upgrade soon after.

After a brief conversation where we just happened to be on the same page, we decided to just go for it and start producing our own line of recreational skates. At the time we were designing our own apparel to send in monthly subscription packs geared toward people that roller skate. We had been doing this for 5 years and it just felt like a natural progression to level up and offer another aspect to the roller skating lifestyle.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

We are both creative minded people, Jessica is a Graphic Designer and Rachel enjoys drawing by hand. Combining our talents, we started producing athleisure apparel geared towards people that play roller derby. Over the years we designed leggings, shirts, hats, accessories, stickers, gear and collaborated with countless artists to bring fun flair to the skate community.

When we were first starting out we wanted to do something that would give back to roller derby, and we found there were a lot of leagues in need of help, from helping them get equipment, funds or just a bit of lift so they could keep skating. Over the past 5 years, we were able to select a different roller derby league each month and donated to them, as a way for us to show our appreciation for the sport we love.

With us now producing recreational skates, it’s just another creative way for us to provide fun & affordable options to new and experienced skaters alike. Having played roller derby for several years, we understood how comfort and performance is important in a skate. We were able to take that experience and develop our line for what a recreational skater needs.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Struggling to get your foot in the door while not having a lot of capital or resources to do things how you’d like. Doing a lot of work and putting in the hours while not being consistently paid since each season is different.

What people don’t understand is the struggle to build a brand presence. We’ve been around for 6 years in the roller derby world but it’s very niche and limited to who we can serve. Recently the need to pivot to more mainstream recreational skaters, has definitely been a challenge establishing a brand presence outside of what we’ve already built. We’re competing against other small businesses and several larger, more established brands so it can be a bit overwhelming at times. But to us it’s all worth it because it allows us to flex our creative muscles while providing a budget friendly option into the hands of newer skaters who don’t know what to look for when shopping for roller skates.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, we’d be so happy if our perspectives can help other small business owners in their business journeys, in any way.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

That you can’t do everything by yourself. In the beginning, you don’t have any money BUT it helps to bring on someone to handle the things you struggle with. This could be customer service, social media or marketing, etc, but as a small business owner, you’re already wearing all the hats. There’s never enough time in the day to handle all aspects of your business, so bringing in help can only help your mental health.

We both really dislike customer service. We had a friend who’s strength and experience was in customer service, so being able to hand that off to them was a lifesaver. We were trying to do everything ourselves for the sake of saving money, but we learned quickly that it was emotionally draining and not sustainable.

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