Texas cowgirls Madison Outhier and Bradi Good roped their way into the WPRA top 15 this season while running growing businesses, Outhier with the jewelry brand she started as a high school freshman and Good with the athleisure line she launched weeks before the summer run.
Both are headed to the National Finals Breakaway Roping, and both have built their brands on the people they rodeo with.
A Company Started at 14
Outhier started Madison Lyn Jewelry as a freshman in high school. The idea came from her aunt, a chef and fashion designer who went to fashion school in Paris. The summer before her freshman year, the two went to New York City’s fashion district.
“We bought all the stuff for me to start my own company doing that,” Outhier said. “And so I bought literally, like, spools of chains, and just charms that were scattered across all of these hole in the wall places, and I started hand making everything, and just doing it in my room at night.”
She had always wanted to own a business.
“I honestly have always just loved everything business,” she said. “I think I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age.”
She studied it, too. Outhier earned her undergraduate degree in entrepreneurship and marketing from Texas A&M’s Mays Business School and is now working on a master’s in entrepreneurship there, online. Through high school and college, between rodeo, school and polo, the jewelry business was on the back burner. Once she finished her undergraduate degree and moved her master’s online, she had time to grow it. Over the past year, she’s hired help.
Her grandfather, an entrepreneur, gave her the advice that changed things. She had been telling him she could grow the company if she did better on social media.
“He’s like, well, you don’t have to be the one to do it, like, it’s great that you have the knowledge to know how to do it, but that just means that you can manage and tell somebody else,” Outhier said.
Now Cassidy Boggs runs the brand’s social media, and Outhier’s best friend Presley Thomas runs shipping. That’s a change from summers when Outhier shipped orders from the road with help from her mom.
The Bull Rider Market
Outhier has always made men’s pieces, but that side of the business grew fast after a watch-band bracelet ended up on bull rider John Crimber. She sent him the jewelry in exchange for pictures and tags.
“Little did I know, now every bull rider… has basically got one,” Outhier said. “And now I’m really expanding into the guy stuff, which has been a lot of fun.”
It happened without ad spending.
“I’ve never paid for any marketing before the last few months,” she said.
Built to Stay On
Outhier doesn’t handmake everything anymore. She calls the company more of a jewelry boutique now. She buys from vendors, designs custom pieces and builds collections from trips with her aunt, including a line of Catholic religious pieces from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a colorful collection from Miami and pieces her aunt brings back from Paris.
The standard for her everyday pieces comes from how she wears jewelry herself: through practice, showers and long days on the road.
“I literally put on my jewelry and I wear it for three months at a time minimum,” she said.
Most of those everyday pieces are PVD coated, often over stainless steel, which keeps them from tarnishing and keeps prices down. Price has mattered since she started, when her customers were her high school friends.
“We’re not gonna go spend $300 on a gold necklace, you know,” Outhier said. “I want girls to be able to buy 10 pieces, you know, and be decked out in my stuff rather than feel like they only have, don’t wanna spend that much and can only buy one or two pieces.”
From December Idea to May Launch
Good’s idea for Goodform came from what she and her friends wear when they aren’t roping.
“Me and all my friends, a bunch of us that rodeo and stuff, when we’re not competing, literally all we wear is stuff like that when we’re driving and when we’re hanging out at the rodeos and stuff,” she said.
She came up with the idea right after the NFBR in December and spent the winter rodeo season learning the business side: setting up Shopify, ordering custom product and testing samples until she was happy with the quality. Samples arrived quickly, but bulk orders took a month or two, so she had to plan well ahead.
“It was definitely in between rodeos when I wasn’t in the mornings and at night when I wasn’t roping or practicing or gone at the rodeos, I would be inside on my computer getting all kinds of stuff figured out,” Good said.
She has an associate’s degree in business marketing from Weatherford College and has always designed her own rodeo schedule graphics. She launched May 21 with a few staple matching sets. Outhier, who was staying at Good’s house during San Angelo, modeled the first photos.
Orders came in fast. In the days before she left for the summer, Good was getting her trailer ready while packing boxes and dropping them at UPS every time she went to town.
“I had honestly a lot of orders and I was constantly putting them out every day before I’d go to town because I was getting my trailer and stuff ready to leave for the summer,” Good said.
Then the summer run started. Good’s mom took over shipping from home, and posting slowed down because Good ran out of new product to show.
“It’s hard to be home and not feel the samples and get to know them and stuff before you launch them to the public,” she said.
She fixed that at Cheyenne. Her parents drove up with new samples, and Good tried them on, tested them and asked her friends what they thought. Those samples became the Josie set, the Madison set, the Aspen dress and the Jordi set, each named by a friend who helped choose the line.
“I’m like, ‘All right, claim which one you want your name to be,'” Good said. “And so they all got to pick out which set that they wanted their name to be after.”
Next, she’s planning orders around the seasons. Mock necks and matching sets will stay in the lineup, and she wants to add new prints and workout gear she likes.
“Mocknecks and matching sets are my staples,” Good said. “So those are always going to be available.”
Hear more from Madison Outhier and Bradi Good about building their businesses from the rodeo road on The Breakaway Breakdown podcast.
