How am I doing (this)?

Short answer: barely.
Long answer: creatively, barely.

The part no one romanticizes. Being an entrepreneur is, at best, a controlled form of anxiety. At worst, it’s making decisions with absolutely no confirmation they’re right… and then standing by them publicly. Take that in.

There’s this idea that building a brand is linear. It is not.

It’s chaotic. Expensive. Occasionally, or most often… humbling - to say the least.

You are constantly guessing, adjusting, and pretending you understand things you absolutely do not. I repeat… DO NOT. So many things I do not understand. Social media algorithms for one. I can’t even spell that word.

Rosa Rims is founder-led and independently funded, which is a very elegant way of saying there is no big team, no agency, and no one to blame when things go sideways. There’s no traditional “creative infrastructure.” No layers. No buffer. No one saying, “maybe let’s not do that.” My god I could use that sometimes.

It’s mostly just me, an idea, and a slightly aggressive belief that it will work out.

The issue has never been a lack of ideas. If anything, it’s the opposite. The challenge is taking what exists very clearly in my head - something cinematic, editorial, culturally relevant - and then… making that real without the budget of a fashion house and the team of a small country.

In the beginning, it was chaos. A lot of “this feels right,” a lot of last-minute decisions, and me being involved in absolutely everything (I should not have been). There’s also the small detail of wanting everything to look like a film, feel like a magazine, and exist in culture… on a budget that suggests otherwise.

So instead of pretending we were something we weren’t, we just didn’t. We built something else.

Rosa operates more like a small, slightly unhinged creative studio than a traditional accessories brand, a tight group of collaborators, a shared point of view, and a general willingness to figure things out as we go. It’s lean. It’s fast. It’s occasionally stressful and we’re making a lot of wrongs in hopes of some good rights. But it means we can take risks, move quickly, and create work that actually feels like something.

Not just product. A point of view.

At its core, Rosa Rims was built on a very simple idea: Sunglasses are not accessories. They’re how you show up. Or how you hide. Or how you become someone slightly more interesting than you were five minutes ago.

There’s a nod to the past in everything we do - the craftsmanship, the women who taught us to be expressive (loudly, preferably), and the belief that life is meant to be lived out in the world, not just documented.

The brand is narrative-led. Which is a polished way of saying: we tell stories. We don’t really do traditional campaigns. We don’t chase trends. We build a world… and the hope is one day the world will speak to enough people that they will want to be a part of it in some small way. Tone, characters, humor, a bit of irreverence - where the product exists, but isn’t screaming for attention.

Not just content, but something closer to a feeling. A moment. A slightly chaotic idea that somehow works.

Speaking of content, we are in a world that demands a lot of content. I mean… a lot. An insatiable amount of content. Something I don’t understand. I have a significant skill set in graphic arts and design, so I can do so much of that in house. My brother is a brilliant cinematographer and filmmaker, so we do that in house, we can take photos and we have insanely talented friends who do things for us at a discounted rate. HOW in god’s green earth are other entrepreneurs doing this?

Is that you? How are you doing it?

AND ALSO Influencers. Gifting. “Exposure.”

A fascinating economy where you send out beautiful, expensive product - carefully packaged, thoughtfully considered, handwritten notes and it disappears into the void.

Sometimes it gets posted. Often it does not. Sometimes it gets worn once. Often… you will never see it again.

You will spend money you don’t have sending product to people you don’t know, hoping they might like it enough to wear it. Not even post it. Just… wear it.

Which, frankly, feels like a reasonable ask.

And yet.

You’ll see them the next day wearing something else. Something new. Something not yours. And you’ll think: maybe tomorrow?

No one really talks about how much product gets lost this way. Or how much money quietly disappears into “maybe this will work.” It’s part of the game now.
You participate, slightly against your will, because not participating somehow feels worse.

And still… you keep going.

Because every now and then, someone wears it. Properly. Naturally. Like it belongs to them. And that moment (however small) feels like confirmation that you’re not completely delusional. That hasn’t really happened for me yet, but I’ve heard it feels great.

The long-term plan?

To build Rosa into something bigger than sunglasses. A creative universe. A place. A perspective. Something that evolves through stories, collaborators, and real life, not just product drops. But when product drops, it will continue to be great. And thoughtful. And detailed.

Which, when you really think about it, is either very smart… or deeply ambitious.

Time will tell.

Which is either resilience…
or a complete lack of self-preservation.

Still deciding.