Rora Basics

The Opportunity

Rora Basics started as Brist Blanks, an internal line of wholesale hats and beanies built primarily to support our custom merchandise business. The product was there, but the brand and assortment had an opportunity to become something much more intentional.

We saw an opportunity to build a standalone wholesale brand around products that felt retail-ready, were easy to customize, and gave our customers a better starting point for their own branded merchandise.

The Work

I helped lead the transition from Brist Blanks to Rora Basics, shaping the brand direction while taking a larger role in product strategy and development.

On the product side, I worked across silhouette, fit, materials, color, construction, and decoration to build an assortment around what we were seeing in the market and hearing directly from customers and our sales teams. That meant developing new styles, refining existing ones, identifying gaps in the assortment, and balancing trend-driven ideas with products that could have a longer life.

Built for everyday wear

Construction and material detail

Customization was considered from the beginning. Products needed to look and feel good on their own, but they also had to work across embroidery, patches, woven labels, and other decoration methods without losing what made the original product successful.

I also helped build the systems around the assortment, creating clearer product standards, development workflows, design tools, and sales resources that made it easier for our teams to understand, sell, and build on the collection.

The Impact

Rora has grown into an owned product assortment of 55+ styles representing nearly 130,000 units of inventory, spanning headwear, apparel, and accessories.

More importantly, it has become a product platform for the larger Brist business. Instead of starting from scratch for every project, our teams can begin with proven silhouettes and materials, then use customization and decoration to create something specific to each customer.

The assortment, spanning color and material

Product built to live outside the box

That combination of product development, customization, and repeatability has allowed us to offer more choice while creating a much more scalable way to bring custom products to market.