We recently connected with Reyna Lay and have shared our conversation below.

Reyna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

My father is my hero. He immigrated from Mexico when he was only 16 in order to help send money to his family back home. Even without a formal education, he learned English, a trade, and started his own business. When I was only 4 years old, my mother passed away and left my father with my older brother, who was 9 at the time, my 6-month old baby brother, and me. My father raised us to be strong, confident, independent children and always taught us the value of hard work. He was always such a loyal, honest, hard-worker, and influenced who I am today. I strive to have those same qualities in everything I do and now, I hope to instill them in my children as well.

Reyna, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started Barbells and Pizza (BBNP), an inclusive fitness clothing line for strong babes in 2020. I love fitness and I love pizza, so that’s where the name comes from. I believe in balance, both in life and in my business. You can strive to be healthy and have your pie too! Pizza pie that is! Currently, our colorful and fun designs in our brand are available in size XS-4X, men’s small-3X, and girls 2T-12.

I’ve been many sizes in my lifetime and in every single size, I wanted to feel confident and beautiful and have fun designs that made me happy. As a size 16 (the average American size of a woman) I wanted cute, colorful prints too! I didn’t want basic black, grey, or brown that many brands offered for sizes XL and up, so I decided to make them myself.

I started off by making my own sewing patterns, sewing my own clothing, selling it, and then as my business grew, working with a manufacturer to produce them all. I have a degree in fashion design & merchandising so it really came in handy when I started BBNP.

What sets us apart from others is our love for empowering women of all sizes to feel beautiful. We believe in women and we want to see them feel strong. We have models of every size on our site and social media.
We are also very proud of the fact that our business is able to help support different organizations as well through our monthly donations. My husband and I are both military Veterans, so we love giving back to military organizations and supporting our soldiers and disabled vets.

What I would love potential customers to know is that we are not a huge organization that only cares about the bottom dollar. We are a husband and wife who handle everything from photography, social media, product design, customer service, and packaging/shipping products. We do it all, and we do it because we truly love it! Every single order that comes through makes us smile. Every single customer is important to us. You are making our dreams come true and allowing us to pursue our entrepreneurship dreams. Thank you for that!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My husband is my business partner. We met almost 20 years ago in the military and have traveled all over the United States with the U.S. Army. My husband recently retired after 25 years in the Army! He is truly my best friend. We go to work together, we workout together, we lead Bible studies together, and we do pretty much everything in life together. We have three amazing kiddos (17, 10, and 6) and we love it! We are together all the time, almost every single day. It’s pretty amazing to be able to run a business with your spouse, but it’s even better when that spouse is also your best friend.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I started this business with $0. I was sewing clothes for myself, shorts, dresses, and tops and posting them on social media. My followers loved them and constantly asked where I got my clothes. After they found out I made them they paid me to make them in their own size. I had a few orders and people told their friends and they all wanted more. So I put a pre-order and sold more, which paid for the fabric and thread, plus a little extra, which I just kept reinvesting it back into more designs.

The purchases multiplied into the hundreds until I just didn’t have enough hours in the day to fulfill them all by myself. That’s when I looked for a manufacturer to work with. From the very beginning it was a passion and love for sewing and fitness clothing that started and thus, it has remained. Pre-orders truly started my business and to this day, they still get us through the hard months as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.barbellsandpizza.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbellsNpizza
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/barbellsnpizza/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@barbellsnpizza
• Other: My personal Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/reynalay

Image Credits
Photo image credits for a few: William Witt @wzwitt