 When will you know you've made it? When I walk down the street and 9 out of 10 kids are wearing Rockets of Awesome. That's a high bar. I know. You might never make it. Rachel Blumenthal, founder and CEO of Rockets of Awesome. Are you ready to answer some questions? I am. Give me your investor pitch. Rockets of Awesome is a vertical kids apparel brand. So we design and manufacture all of our own product under the Rockets of Awesome label. It's for boys and girls sizes 2 to 14. And we really design product that kids will fall in love with. That is super soft and stretchy, magical details, but also clothes that parents will think their kids look really polished and put together in. We are an omnichannel business, so we sell via e-commerce, subscription, select wholesalers. Do you target kids or moms? We target both. Ralph Laurence started with ties. What's your hit item that you're going to build off the rest? Our silver bomber jacket. Do you ever consider building a brand mark and putting it on every item like LV Gucci and Montclair? We've thought about it, and I think transparently we just haven't been able to spend enough time to get there. That said, we also know that people don't want to walk around with a brand mark everywhere, and so when we do it, it'll be pretty discreet. There are so, so, so many apparel brands out there. What white space did you see? We really focused on the customer, and I didn't believe that there was a kids apparel brand that was focusing on a modern consumer. So really understanding the dynamic between modern parents, modern kids, and delivering both a customer experience as well as a product offering that was aligned with that customer. Do you shop by gender? Do you start thinking about how to play into all these like, woky kind of ways to do stuff? We do shop by gender. We don't want to be educating the customer on different ways to do what is very familiar to them. That said, we do have products that we will put both in boys and girls' assortment because we've heard from customers that that's how they're buying them. How did you decide what gets made? Do you focus group? We do focus groups to bring in kids who give us feedback on the items. We don't do a ton of focus grouping once a collection is designed. We do it more sort of retroactively because, you know, so much of what we've had success with is that we have a really strong point of view on design and want to make sure that that comes through. Where in the world did they come up with the name? Kids. Kids have the most magical confidence. They're gross. They pick their nose. They are weird. They fart. And they're so confident. So Rockets of Awesome has no space reference. It's actually all about the kids and their personality and their confidence. Who said Rockets of Awesome? Nobody said Rockets of Awesome. It was thousands and thousands of post-it notes and lots of bottles of wine for which we were able to sort of frankenstein it together. Is the name controversial? The name brings a smile to every single person's face. And it's the one thing that really stops people and they say, what is that? So it was one of the scary. I think controversial. It was controversial in making the decision. People said it was too long. They thought it was weird. You were never going to get the URL. No one wanted to type in the email address. But I think it was probably one of the best decisions we made. Were you ever afraid the name could be corny? I was nervous about that. But I think because it came from such an unexpected place, right? If you had, if the brand imagery had all been space references, it would have been horribly, you know, cheesy. And that's something that we are very, very diligent about that it never has sort of that predictable space reference to it. Do you ever consider if you need to mature in some sense to turn it into like ROA? No, we've toyed with the idea of ROA and that might be something that we use at some point over time. But no, I mean, I think the beauty of the brand is that it's incredibly sophisticated while also being incredibly playful. What are the best and worst things about being the founder of Warby Parker's wife? Well, when you fundraise, people ask you how much time you spend on your business because they're like, well, why do you have to work? And I think there's just a presumption that everything's been handed to you. The best has actually been that I've become very close with his team over time. My business actually worked out of his office in the very beginning. Warby has the most incredible team, and so we've really been able to leverage their expertise over time. And so that's an incredible resource for us. Are you at all professionally competitive with your spouse? No. I had two businesses before this, and our businesses have always been at different phases at different times. And so I think that we're really grateful and appreciative that we've been able to learn from each other at different points in time. Who's on your Mount Rushmore? Oprah. I mean, she's just amazing. My husband, Neil Blumenthal, RBG, founder of Spanx. She's the only person on my wife's Mount Rushmore. Really? It's just Sarah Blinkley, Sarah Blinkley, Sarah Blinkley. When will you know you've made it? When I walk down the street and 9 out of 10 kids are wearing pockets of awesome. That's a high bar. I know. You might never make it. By the way, by that definition. I'm getting close in my kids' school, which I feel like, you know, is a step in the right direction, but it's really more when it's the 9 out of 10 kids that I don't know. How's building a fashion brand different than any other category? You know, I think that fashion can be challenging because people are so concerned about, you know, is it stylish or is it trendy? And then is it going to be over? And what I love about kids is that you have a lot of flexibility there. And, you know, if we can sort of always be ahead of what's going on in kids' fashion and be much more aligned, you know, our designers look at men's and women's fashion versus we never, ever look at what's happening in kids that really enables us to make sure that we're seeing ahead. What brands do you personally look up to? I really admire brands like Warby Parker, Beauty Counter, Glossier. And the reason that I admire them so much is because all those founders are incredibly passionate and have a very, very strong mission in the world, and they're very different. This term authenticity is thrown around all the time, but it comes from a really personal, natural place that you can touch and you can feel in those brands. What brand past or present are you hoping to be on par with? I think there are so many brands that we look at that we really admire. So for instance, we really admire Zara's supply chain. We really admire the aesthetic of some women's and men's brands. There isn't one kid's brand that we look at and we say we want to be like them. That's why we created this brand because we believe that there needed to be a new, modern brand in this kid's space that was cool and stylish and also had an accessible price point. Who's your competition? We believe that we have to be one of the two to three brands that mom is thinking about when she shops for her kids clothes. And in our category and our demographic, we're looking at Gap, LaNavy, Cat and Jack from Target, Zara, H&M. Have you seen copycats? Yes. I mean, Amazon has a brand right now called A is for Awesome. You raised $19.5 million series C. Why not 20? We tried. What part of the business surprised you the most? I think it was surprised by how much people would be impressed by our packaging. You know, we spent a lot of time thinking about the design and the function. We wanted to be really simple and easy for parents. We wanted to be really fun and engaging for kids. So none of it was accidental. It was very diligent. But, you know, I also think that there are a lot of great brands that really focus on their packaging now. And the level of how effusive our customers are about it has always impressed me. There seems to be a certain startup playbook that everyone uses. How have you deviated from it? The startup playbook makes me nauseous, right? It's like the same color palette, the same font, the same packaging. I'm of the belief that it's critically important to be different. And so when everyone goes here, I go as far over there as possible. How did you decide on your brand aesthetic? I just felt it. I really just felt it. I saw it. I could taste it. I knew exactly what I wanted this brand to feel like and to look like. And I think more than anything, the hardest part was learning how to articulate it. If you had to give a dictionary definition of your design aesthetic, what would it be? Polished but unexpectedly playful. What's the hardest lesson you've had to learn since launching? Learning how to manage people and learning how to build an organization, how it scales, you know, as it scales. So, you know, five people around a table, 10 people, all of a sudden it's 25 or 60. Those are very different types of management styles. What part of your brand still needs work? I think of our brand as a living human being. So, you know, our brand is still in its infancy and a brand isn't about a logo and packaging. And then you call it a day and you say like, well, we did the brand. It's about the evolution of that brand over time and really peeling sort of the onion or peeling off the personality of that brand. So we're at sort of that tipping point where we have to start evolving it more. And that's really hard to do. And it's something that we're spending a lot of time on right now. Rachel Blumenthal, founder and CEO of Rockets of Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on here and answering some questions. Thanks for torturing me. I'm Ian Wishingrad and I'll see you next time on I'm With the Brand.