On our grand opening weekend—April 1, 2022—we had several players from the [University of Connecticut women’s basketball] three-peat team [2001-02 through 2003-04] that when it went public that we were opening, all phoned each other and were like, “Let’s buy tickets to Portland.” They came in, got a table to watch the Final Four, hugged and cried. It was emotional: Not only are we giving spaces for fans to celebrate fandom spectatorship, but we’re giving athletes the recognition that they have always deserved.
And now some of the greatest names in women’s sports have their signatures and memorabilia on your walls.
Then we have athletes that people don’t recognize, but they’re epic athletes. We had a woman who just got inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame—a three-sport athlete from Oregon State University—who came in the day after she got inducted, took some photos with us and then signed the wall. We had a pair of Paralympians come in and sign the wall.
We’ve had small, women-owned Vietnamese business owners that come in to thank me. There is this intersectionality of The Sports Bra that I hadn’t anticipated when we opened.
How have you navigated the growing demand for women’s sports and seats at The Sports Bra to this point?
Part of it is small business entrepreneurship, requiring flexibility and adaptability while hanging on to the most core elements of your mission and values.
The second part of it is community. From the very micro to the people right next door to our building, to the macro, as in the global community. I thought [the community] was women’s sports fanatics, and it’s actually so much larger than that. It’s almost like a Petri dish: We put something out there, and everybody has contributed to this exponential growth.
What did it mean for The Sports Bra when brands started to notice its success?
At the very beginning, I didn’t know what was gonna happen, so I said yes to everything.
We have a very privileged seat at the table where we’re able to say, “OK, how mission-aligned is this? Does it promote girls’ and women’s sports? Does it protect trans rights? Is it legislative? Or is it just dollars or just big brands trying to latch on to something that’s very community-oriented?”