One of the greatest struggles military families face is finding financial stability. We’ve all heard about the challenges veterans unfortunately face when claiming benefits and landing jobs after their active service, but another front about this issue that’s often overlooked is how military spouses face many difficulties and obstacles when it comes to finding employment that fit their ever-changing lifestyle.
This is something that Lisa Bradley and Cameron Cruse, military wives and co-founders of All-American handbag company R. Riveter, sought out to address when they founded their brand back in 2011. Guided by the statement, “We are stronger together than we are apart. We can do it,” a singular concept that helped the United States through some of its most challenging moments in history, Bradley and Cruse set out to not only resolve the issue of military spouse employment, but to actively challenge the status quo of an industry.
Riveter employs military spouses across the country to create beautiful and meaningful handbags that represent the stories of each woman who worked on it. Their business model allows these women to have productive and flexible careers while following their military spouses from one assignment to the next. The brand has faced many difficulties and struggles through the years, but ploughed through each one of them like true Americans. 10 years after its founding, the brand has now evolved to become a nationwide community of military spouses who support, encourage, and rally behind one another.
“What we stand for is being able to find opportunities where there is none, and creating connections between individuals that really, truly believe in our country and want to be able to do their part,” Bradley says in one of her past interviews.
Three years after appearing on ABC’s Shark Tank and experiencing massive growth after, R. Riveter was faced with another challenge: the Covid-19 pandemic, which took a major toll on the global economy, including retail. Not one to be bogged down even by something so massive, Bradley and Cruse found ways to not only continue, but expand their purpose. They pivoted and started creating PPEs for medical frontliners.
“Who knew that over the last eight years we were unknowingly building a network capable of responding to this crisis? Just as the women supporting the wartime effort during World War II answered the call to assist with supplies and munitions, we are asking the community to answer the call in this effort against a deadly enemy.”
It’s nice to see a company founded on the premise of helping others pursue their original vision a decade after it was established. We can’t wait to see what else Bradle, Cruse, and all their riveters are coming up with next.
To know more about the R. Riveter and their products, you may visit https://www.rriveter.com.
