Building and Scaling an Apparel Brand With a Purpose, featuring Kelly Roach

Starting an apparel brand can require far more time, money, and patience than you might expect, and unfortunately there may be plenty of expensive lessons to learn along the way. In this episode, I'm bringing back a conversation with entrepreneur Kelly Roach, a former NFL cheerleader and Fortune 500 executive turned 8-figure+ entrepreneur empowering thousands around the globe to achieve financial and lifestyle freedom through entrepreneurship. Kelly shares openly about the biggest mistakes she made when launching her apparel brand, Give Her Courage, along with what she learned and how she would do things differently. She is passionate about inspiring girls and women to reach incredible goals, both through her apparel line and her strategic coaching. 📝 Today We're Covering: Why launching with too many products can make it harder to build momentum How to test demand for your designs before investing in a lengthy and expensive custom development process Realistic timelines of apparel development, including how samples, revisions, overseas vendors, ports, and tariffs can affect them How inventory quantities affect your overall startup budget Why you need a separate budget for marketing and advertising The importance of building wholesale relationships to get your product in front of potential buyers Why product quality, fit, and customer loyalty are essential to building a brand that can grow over the long term Kelly's journey offers a valuable look at some of the financial and strategic realities that come with building an apparel brand. From testing your concept to planning your long term goals, this conversation is packed with lessons that can help you approach the apparel business with a clear understanding of what it takes to get a product to market and build a sustainable brand. ➡️ Connect with Kelly: Website: kellyroachcoaching.com IG: @kellyroachofficial LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kellyroachint/ Join the club: thecourageousbrand.com Listen to her podcast: kellyroachinternational.com/podcast/ ➡️ Connect with Rachel: Join The Board: thebusinessofapparel.com/join Get in touch here: thebusinessofapparel.com/contact Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rachel-erickson-pmp/ Order my new book, The Business of Apparel, here! 🤝 Meet Rachel: Rachel Erickson is a Fractional COO, Apparel Industry Consultant, and founder of Unmarked Street and The Business of Apparel. With 20+ years in technical design and product development leadership, she sat at the executive table of a $25M apparel line and helped scale it to $60M in one year. After decades working inside major fashion companies, she learned the truth behind billion-dollar brands, and it's not about chasing trends or pumping out endless products. It's about building clean processes, tightly edited assortments, and obsessively focused customer targeting. Rachel helps founders and CEOs of performance apparel brands: ✅ Build lean, profitable product lines ✅ Streamline operations for growth ✅ Replace overwhelm with executive clarity ✅ Create garments that fit bodies in motion Whether you're just hitting $1M in revenue or trying to break through the $10M ceiling, Rachel will join you as an embedded operations and product partner—running fittings, line plans, tech packs, and vendor communications so you can get back to leading.