Rachel Nilsson
Rachel Nilsson is the founder and CEO of her clothing company, Rags. She was frustrated with the buttons and snaps on her son’s onesies, so she created a patented stretchy neck hole that dispensed with the buttons and snaps.
Her design earned her three offers on television’s “Shark Tank,” but she turned those offers down because they didn’t feel right. Disney offered a partnership but she felt she wasn’t ready. So she grew her company via her website, social media, and word-of-mouth. Big names noticed, including Forbes, Vogue, People, Us Weekly, and Pop Sugar. She was soon listed on Huffington Post’s 15 “coolest kids brands” list.
At the end of 2018, she received $1.5 million venture funding through Kickstart Seed Fund. She has also expanded her line of clothing to include adults and baby items.
One of the keys to her success is exclusivity. She posts unique, high-quality, limited designs of her clothes on her website and they sell out within hours, sometimes minutes. Nilsson’s customers are loyal.
Curt Roberts, of Silicon Slopes Magazine, said, “The new generation of consumers (namely millennials) demand that brands are social media-literate and express the same values as they do—namely personalization, uniqueness, simplicity, quality and lifestyle over materialism.”[1]
Nilsson is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
