We recently connected with Tesha Nixon Cunningham and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tesha, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In Dec. 2019 we registered for our LLC because Kendall (7) came home crying about being teased for being “too tall” and being the only girl playing basketball with all the boys. This had been a reoccurring issue at this point. Although I hugged her and told her she was perfect the way she was, she asked a piercing question which was, “Can I just be normal?”. Being a child of a father who is 6’7″ and a mother who is 6’2″, I know it’s inevitable that she’d be tall and different all her life. I wanted her to know that being extraordinary is a blessing and I felt inspired to build a community of other girls who would feel empowered to love themselves and others for their uniqueness. I just wanted to find a special way to bond and build up her confidence. We had planned to vend at her big brother’s travel basketball games during the summer where Kendall would make sports themed bracelets and I would create t-shirts with powerful statements that are geared for female athletes and their moms to feel empowered. We attended multiple vending events to take notes and develop our vision.
Unfortunately, in 2020, the pandemic hit…. we were sitting on vending materials and had nowhere to go. In an effort to legally be able to vend and to be “official” I had created a website, an Instagram page and began to follow all of my favorite entertainers on Instagram. It wasn’t until July 2020 when business mogul and entertainer, Kandi Burruss, posted us a message of encouragement and shared her own take on our business model on her IG stories that I realized that we were on to something!!! People began to follow us droves as a result and were visiting our brand new and website with very few products that people attempted to purchase. We quickly pivoted to actually producing clothes and organized an outdoor birthday party for Kendall’s 8th birthday (Sept. 2020) that we themed, “Prissy Parade”. We invited her friends and a local team of teenaged models to come out and model on the sidewalk of our neighborhood in our newly produced pieces. As a thank you, we mailed Kandi our very first hoodie and she ACTUALLY wore it while bike riding with her close friends and it was posted in her stories. When a customer sent me the screen recording of Kandi wearing our hoodie, we knew our vision had been illuminated even more!
Since then, we have had a fashion show every year in September to release our new line, we’ve written and published a short story series geared to inspire female athletes, we’ve also garnered a shout out from Hall of Fame Basketball player and coach, Dawn Staley, and even had a post shout-out from renowned sports motivational speaker and public figure, Eric Thomas. Most recently we were featured on Fox 5 DC and the local cable station, CTV News for our largest fashion show yet held in front of 4 thousand+ people during halftime of the UCONN vs. my alma mater, Georgetown Women’s Basketball game in Feb 2023!
Even though we have had an LLC since Dec. 2019 and have been propelled into a brand faster than we had planned, we have spent much of this time building community and our brand. We are now in a space where we are ready to take to the next level and Kendall’s dream of becoming a global brand!

Tesha, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Tesha NIxon Cunningham and I am the daughter of 2 Howard University Grads (My mother and inspiration is a retired DCPS educator and teacher mentor & my father is a retired Accountant and High School Basketball coach), and the sister of two brothers who played Division I basketball. I now am married to a high school basketball coach and we have two children, Angelo 14 years old, and Kendall, 10 years old who both play basketball.

I played basketball in high school at Friendly High School for my father for my last 2 years where I was awarded All-County for basketball in the Washington Post in my senior year, I was highly recruited and received my first recruiting letters on the first day of my freshman year when I was asked to report to the office to pick up a copy paper box full of college letters of interest.

I went on to play on a full athletic scholarship after high school at Georgetown University and what I am most proud of from that time is first, making history at the school for being the first female basketball player at GU to be selected to play for the USA Olympic Festival Basketball team, participating in fashion shows and even helping the then young college student, Amerie Rogers, but now well-known singer and entertainer how to perfect her walk, being mentored and inspired by the late great Hall of Famer, John Thompson Jr., landing a 2 year internship with BET writing scripts and heading behind the scenes action for the show, Planet Groove, and most of all graduating with degrees in English & Fine Arts. In addition to on campus, off campus, I was signed to a modeling agency that had booked me for a major job that would have granted me my first photo shoot and spread for a major athletic brand, but I was denied the opportunity because of NCAA rules that prohibited scholarship athletes to use their Name, Image, and/or likeness to promote and receive compensation. This propelled me to start my first Fashion and Entertainment Show Company, Positive Productions, that I produced with a team of friends I corralled together each summer. I enabled hundreds of youth in our community to have the experience I truly wanted to have for myself and it was extremely profitable as well during those college years of mine.

After college, I went on to join the Philadelphia Rage Team, which was in the ABL (American Basketball League – the first professional Women’s Basketball league in the US), and was coached by the late great Hall of Famer and Olympic Gold medalist coach Anne Donovan. And later, went on to become an Assistant Women’s Basketball Coach at Division I, George Mason University.

I then began educating teens in public schools in Washington, DC, and over the years, became a Reading Specialist, Assistant Principal and now Innovation and Redesign Coach for school redesign. Throughout my years as an educator, I started a fashion club and coached a High School girls basketball program that garnered 14 League Championships.

It was a no brainer for me when my daughter expressed her passions and shared about her lack of self-confidence that we combined our expertise, passions and dreams all into one brand to spread to others just like us!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Since we had initially viewed our business as a sports themed t-shirt and jewelry vending business we prepared in that way. We had spent months on inspirational visits looking at other vendors at various pop-up shops, vending events, conventions etc. in order to build ours. We had planned on the model of vending at sporting events and athletic competitions beginning with her big brother’s AAU games. We spent a few thousand dollars on materials for vending specifically as well. When the pandemic hit, we were literally sitting on product and materials with no plan, but we were determined to move forward with our dreams we had begun to build together.

As we were pivoting to learn the space of e-commerce, we leaned on other entrepreneurs (Richelle Harvey of Step-by-Step Therapeutic, Kesha Veney of Devine Wine Jellies, and Zak Bell of Jon Marc) for advice as we entered the space of true entrepreneurship. During the time of the George Floyd inspired movement, our community pulled together so much tighter and the singer, business mogul and entertainer, Kandi Burruss took to her Instagram and decided to shout-out small business owners. About a month after shouting out a few entrepreneurs who had helped us on Kandi’s post, we were completely shocked by the hundreds of people who began to follow our newly established IG page in a matter of minutes. Based on her interpretation of our then one page website, she had shared our story and our business to her followers. We were so excited about it that we sent her a hoodie that we had designed just for her and she actually wore it a month later!!!

Then, the sharp pivot took place, this is when we became a clothing brand for female athletes and their mothers! We found ourselves creating, driving up to New York to meet with designers and manufacturers, and I even cleared my savings trying to keep up with the local demand of people wanting the hoodie we had made for Kandi. We purchased all types of clothing trying meet the new customer’s needs and desires; it was a crazy!

We are so grateful for what she has done for us because we were not thinking as big as she had made it for us. Although we lost a great deal of money through trial and error, the push to pivot is exactly what we needed. We feel like we have now learned what it means to establish the foundation of a brand, and identifying our true target market without chasing random dollars from potential customers because we have established a clear mission. We know who we serve, and we believe we can fulfill the missing piece of inspiration through our brand specifically for them. We are ready to go to the next level!!

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

Our business model was designed with multiple revenue streams as the foundational model. It is quite unorthodox based on our research to begin with multiple streams, but we believe that it is what makes our brand unique. We have 3 major pillars to our brand: 1. We sell Sporty Chic Streetwear with reminders on your chest of strength and confidence.
2. We produce events that are geared to uplift and shine the much-needed light on Female Athletes such as fashion shows during sporting events or including athletes as the models.
3. We have authored, narrated, and published the first book of a series of books titled, “Angela the Athlete” which is an inspirational book series that teaches life lessons through athletics and through the experience of a young female athlete. (Available on Amazon!)
Each of the 3 major pillars align perfectly with our mission to “Accentuate the Beauty, Highlight the Positive, and Unleash the Beast in every Female Athlete who engages with our brand.”

Contact Info:

• Website: prissyathletics.com
• Instagram: @prissyathletics
• Facebook: @prissyathletics
• Linkedin: N/A
• Twitter: N/A
• Youtube: Prissy Athletics
• Yelp: N/A

Image Credits
Bernadette Dare