MTV's Road Rules Alums: Successful Business is Possible After Your 15 Minutes
By Jacki Garfinkel
Rachel Robinson
As the new Road Rules premieres next week on MTV, your eyes will be on something more than just the challenges. It will be on the clothing. Why? Because Veronica Portillo is back as a competitor, and she'll be donning her College Dropout t-shirts throughout the show. Once you see them, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Rachel Robinson and Veronica were known for wearing their scandalously fun t-shirts throughout Real World/Road Rules The Inferno 2, and their creative clothing caught on quickly. During The Inferno 2, the girls gave their shirts out to the other cast members. Rachel told me, "Everybody started wearing them like crazy. We'd wake up in the morning and go to breakfast, and notice the entire cast was wearing one of our shirts."
The shirts came to fruition on one Halloween when Rachel was not sure what she wanted to dress as. "I wanted to be a baseball player," but she didn't want to be from your typical team because it wouldn't be as cute. "So Veronica and I came up with 'Switch Hitters,'" she said. The entire night people came up to Rachel telling her they loved the shirt.
Between that Halloween and The Inferno 2, the Rachel and Veronica duo realized they needed to get their business going, and fast. The concept for the shirts? Rachel said, "We want to put out shirts that, if our company didn't exist, they would be hard to find." The shirts, which are very bold, are not always shirts you'd wear in front of mom and dad. "The ones that are worth sporting all the time are probably the ones you won't wear at home." The shirts are somewhat risqué, but many of the statements are validating for women and men. If nothing else, they're really humorous.
Yet if you haven't found a suitable place to sport your College Dropout shirt just yet, not to worry. Rachel said, "The shirts we're coming out with now... our goal is to make them a little more mainstream in the sense that people can be comfortable wearing them everywhere... We want people of all ages to buy them and wear them everywhere." She added, "But we're still going to push the envelope."
Shirts like their "Hillary 2008" one can definitely be worn anywhere, and shows that the ladies put exactly what they're thinking on their shirts. In a note they sent out to their email list, Rachel and Veronica wrote: "It is official, Hillary Clinton will be doing her best to become our next President and the very first female President! Let's all show our support and wear this t-shirt we released months before the official word! How did we know? Well let's just say College Dropout is ahead of the trends!!!"
Rachel said, "We do a lot of gay shirts, a lot of shirts that are political, a lot that are feminist," so there's a wide variety that can appeal to many consumers. Rachel said she noticed that a lot of t-shirts with sayings on them were worn by males and were misogynistic toward women, which is something they wanted to stay away from. The College Dropout shirts are not degrading, but empowering.
When Rachel and Veronica first started their company, they questioned whether or not they should use their MTV reality show ties. "Do we want to advertise this as Rachel and Veronica from MTV? Do we really want to play up the participation of the two owners being in reality television?" At first, the pair decided not to emphasize the reality connection too much.
Then they quickly realized that other companies were using reality stars for publicity. "They basically wanted what we had naturally. They were trying to sell their shirts by having people we knew personally wear them... We started saying you know what? We're going to take advantage of the fact that we have all of this publicity that we've been on MTV for so many years."
The College Dropout site has remained relatively the same since its inception, with some new t-shirts added sporadically. Things are about to change though. "The company is about to get really big," Rachel said.
She continued, "Veronica is going on the next Road Rules so we just decided on five new shirts that are going to launch at the end of the month, with a new website."
Two of the new shirts are already on the site, and the new site should launch in the next few weeks.
Here are the two latest shirts:
See what I mean about being bold?
While many reality stars do try to use their reality stardom to help their careers, Rachel and Veronica have truly created a company that works. Whether or not you enjoy reality TV, or even know who Rachel and Veronica are, the actual products remain awesome. While the owners use the reality show fame to help sell, their clothing line isn't based on reality TV. It can be worn by all women and men who aren't afraid to let their clothing do the audacious talking for them.
Veronica and Rachel know a thing or two about putting yourself out there. "None of us went to school for t-shirt companies. We're kind of learning it all as we go along. Through the years we've worked out the kinks in our company," Rachel said.
In fact, one of the reasons you've been missing them from the Real World/Road Rules Challenges is because they've been hard at work with College Dropout . "It was such a crucial point, but we said to each other, if we leave now, it'll throw everything back," Rachel said. "We waited for the perfect time to come back."
MTV called both Rachel and Veronica and asked them if they were available to do Road Rules 2007: Viewers Revenge. There were only three spots for alumni girls. "Everybody knows we're inseparable. I think for viewers they wanted to have more of a diverse cast that people don't know as best friends," Rachel explained. She added, "You can't have a Road Rules show without Veronica, so they of course offered it to her."
The latest installment of Road Rules will serve as excellent promotion for College Dropout , which is completely deserved. Veronica and Rachel's hard work, dedication, and extremely creative product should keep them in business for a long time. Their next step? "In the next year, we want people to be able to walk into a store and buy our shirts," Rachel said. At the rate they're going, there's no reason that won't happen.
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