Meet Rachel Kassinger | Co-Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rachel Kassinger and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
The idea for Twinnks stemmed from one of our biggest wardrobe pet peeves: the visible (bra) cup lines. Or as we call it, the VCL. One day in 2016, we were talking on the phone and as I was changing outfits because the lines were showing through my shirt, I told Rebecca they should make a bra with an undershirt like material that extends above the cups to smooth out the lines—just as an undershirt or cami would. Rebecca informed me that I had told her that idea 100 times & she agreed, it would be epic. From there, we went on a hunt to see if it already existed. We did a ton of research as to which bras are actually invisible under clothes and all we could find were bralettes (which are great, but we wanted more support) or those that concealed bra lines at the back of the bra (also great, but were front-focused). Therefore, we decided to make it ourselves and that started a nearly 4 year journey of product development.

We launched our first product, the Nah Bra, on March 17, 2020 – the first day of quarantine and the day everyone stopped wearing bras. We didn’t care, we had waited long enough. The pandemic didn’t slow us down. In fact, it made us realize there was another hole in the market: loungewear with a built-in bralette. Even though there were countless memes about the only perk of lockdown being that bras come off, the reality is most women do not want to flop around everywhere. I remember one day in particular, I was working at home with no Zoom meetings scheduled and at around 3pm, a UPS man came to my door needing a signature. I was still in a big old tank top, flimsy bralette and pajama pants and I was genuinely embarrassed. After that, We set out to design something that was insanely comfortable that you could wear around the house, but versatile enough that you could run a quick errand & not be mortified if you saw someone you knew. In July 2021, we launched our New Normal Loungewear, which consisted of a lounge dress, tank and jogger equipped with a built-in bralette sewn only at the shoulder so the dress and tank hang off the body in the most flattering way. We are very proud of this line and are not afraid to say: it is the most comfortable loungewear I’ve ever put on. We sold out in the first month, but quickly restocked and now we’re eager to expand it. We have a lot of ideas in the works!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We both come from corporate backgrounds (Rachel in marketing & Rebecca in insurance) and have completely bootstrapped Twinnks from the start. I feel like that’s not something you hear about, really. A lot of companies are started with a trust fund or big investment from a VC firm, but we had to be extremely scrappy & save our money in order to make this dream a reality and that’s something we’re very proud of. It’s been a lot of hard work & means growth has to be slow, but it also means small batch, high quality products and we wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s important for us to be very transparent about what goes into launching a startup company. It’s really hard but very rewarding, not to mention badass! I’m sorry, it is. You just have to be patient with it, which was a tough but important lesson.

We also just announced that for now on, a portion of sales will go to Texas EquuSearch, a search & recovery team started by Tim Miller in honor of his daughter Laura, who was abducted & murdered in 1984. They’ve been involved with over 1800 searches across the world, have brought over 400 missing people home & solely work off of donations. We’ve always been interested in true crime & want to help in any small way we can, because we just can’t imagine what these families go through. When we started Twinnks, we knew we wanted to give to an organization that we were passionate about, & we’re so happy that the time has finally come!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Oh I love this question. Okay, buckle up:

One night, we’d do King and Duke happy hour then Umi for dinner, followed by drinks at St. Regis & Himitsu . Definitely go to Decatur one day for lunch at Brick Store then Inner Voice Brewery. Also on the agenda: listen to live music at Northside Tavern, sit at the bar at Taqueria del sol, Forza Storico, Marcel, Leon’s Full Service, Dekalb farmers market on a Sunday, El Tesoro, Gunshow, My Parents Basement in Avondale Estates if we’re needing a 90s vibe, Lost Druid Brewery, 8arm, Daves Cosmic Sub, an Atlanta United game, Venkmans for brunch with live music then bounce around the beltline. Lastly, Grant Park Coffeehouse because we’ll be exhausted.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We really couldn’t have done any of this without our design & development consultant, Thomas Becker. We had no idea what we were doing or where to start with developing a bra, but Thomas walked us through every steps, found a factory, communicated what we wanted, I mean, everything. He’s the BEST! Huge shoutout to TB.

Website: https://twinnks.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twinnks_co/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twinnks