Get emailed Leading Moms In Business Updates

Share this

Contestant's Case to Win

RealKidz is a life style apparel company for kidz. We provide clothing for plus-size girls with exceptional fit that is age-appropriate, fun and fashionable. Our mission is to support girls self-esteem by providing them clothing they look great in and are excited to wear. We are preparing to launch the RealKidz® Family Network this summer to support families in incorporating healthy lifestyle choices into their lives.

About Founder, Merrill Guerra:
I am the founder, CEO and visionary of RealKidz, a life style apparel company for kidz™ that boosts children’s self esteem by providing clothing that is trendy, age-appropriate, great-fitting and high quality, RealKidz will also provide customers and their families a range of support through the RealKidz® Family Network due out later this year. I am also proud to be mother of an 13 year old daughter and an 9 year old son. Having graduated from Stanford University, and after many years in the workplace and then as a stay at home mom, I attended the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan where I received my MBA in 2008. I actually launched my new company RealKidz, while I was completing my MBA degree. I was recognized as “MBA Entrepreneur of the Year for 2008” by the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan. The inspiration for creating RealKidz arose from my experience as a mother, specifically relating to the difficulties I had finding age-appropriate, well-fitting clothing for my young daughter. When I first investigated the marketplace for the RealKidz business model, I found that many children (and their parents) had the same unmet need that I had encountered in my own experience as a mother. As a first time entrepreneur, founding and operating a company based in Ypsilanti Michigan, I and my company have not only survived and met significant milestones in developing the company in extremely challenging economic circumstances, but we are now poised for significant growth and success. I have assembled an outstanding management team at RealKidz, am in the process of designing and launching the company’s social network and upgraded website to include a more robust and easier to use e-commerce platform. In one of the most challenging financing environments for startup entrepreneurial companies, I successfully completed my first round of angel funding in November, 2008 which received a matching investment from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capitalization Fund through Ann Arbor SPARK. RealKidz has caught the attention of the press. We have been featured in a series of 12 articles in the Detroit Free Press throughout 2008 and 2009. I and my company have also been the subject of a June 30, 2008 BusinessWeek article. The New York Times interviewed me for a blog article that ran in 2009. Throughout all of the time and energy consuming demands associated with founding and running RealKidz, I have remained an active and involved mother, supporting my daughter at her track meets and band concerts and enthusiastically participating at my son’s elementary school and baseball games. I am excited to see what happens over this next very critical year as we move toward completing our next round of funding and hitting cash flow positive.