The little engine that could.

On becoming...

I grew up in a small southern town that to this day still doesn’t have a Gap or Barnes and Noble. I grew up riding horses and hiking in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains. I come from a long line of resilient, capable, artistic southern women. My grandmother taught me to sew and my mother, an artist and small business owner herself, taught me how to make a business out of it.

But my dream was to be a musical theater actress in NYC. I started singing and dancing at the age of five, performing professionally by the age of 10, dancing and singing upwards of 30 hours a week throughout my teenage years. It was my singular goal and obsession.

BUT I always found solace and peace in sewing.

My incredible grandmother (who wore pearls to Walmart) taught me how to sew at a very young age and that opened up an entire world for me. When I was 13, she got me a subscription to InStyle magazine and that was my lifeline for fashion and creativity.

If I could imagine it, I could make it. In my early teens, I was sewing most of my own clothes and selling them to small local boutiques. I even made a shirt that every 15-year-old girl seemed to want for the Dave Matthews concerts of the mid-90’s. But even with that early success, I never wanted to do it professionally. It was too personal. Even during my Broadway tour, I’d sneak into the costume office between shows, stitching away and designing outrageous Burning Man outfits to impress my now-husband.

Sewing was and is my magic. Creating something out of nothing is the absolute coolest thing ever.

Much like founding a business…

Fast forward to 2011. I’d traded New York for Los Angeles and was really putting my expensive NYU education to use - dancing in bikinis in music videos. Once again, sewing became my escape. I made a jumpsuit I wore everywhere. On every girls’ trip, someone would try it on and somehow, it looked incredible on everyone. We called it “the Sisterhood of the Traveling Jumpsuit.” Women stopped me everywhere I went; the ultimate compliment.

I was with my now-husband at a concert when a woman stopped me and said, “Where did you get that jumpsuit?” I told her, “I made it. I make all my own clothes.” She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Well, if you make these in America and sell them for under $200, I’ll carry them at my store at Fred Segal.”

Cut to a week later, I’m at an L.A. Mag party (still don’t know how I got the invite). The fashion editor walks up to me and says, “Where did you get that jumpsuit?” I said, “Funny you should ask, I made it. And I might be launching at Fred Segal.” She said, “When you do, I’ll do a story on you.”

So, the next day, I went on Craigslist, found a few production sewers in a very questionable part of town but boy could they sew.

And just like that… Ripley Rader was born.

I have never played by anyone else’s rules, to this day I’ve not taken one penny of outside money. I started this company with a few thousand dollars and now do 8 figures a year in sales while staying profitable (even if, some years, just by a penny. Ha!).

For the first ten years of our business, the only way we could make ends meet was to rent out half of our house. From 2013 to 2022 we never made a profit, driving our old Saab into the ground, making sure people got paid while we were eating ramen. It was me, my husband Ben, and an 18-year-old intern from the local high school.

During Covid, we quickly pivoted to masks and medical gowns to keep our factory afloat and a business alive.

I learned how to use a camera and started shooting everything for the company -something I still do to this day - and we lived an extraordinarily scrappy life.

Coming out of the pandemic, I decided that Ripley Rader needed not only the product to speak for it, but it needed me. I stepped into the camera and became the face of the brand and started telling my personal story. We exploded because of this AND because I believe women wanted to feel strong and sexy again but weren’t willing to sacrifice comfort.

We are 10 years deep, and then an overnight success. We’re the little engine that could.