Exploring Life & Business with KamGi & Kyle Finch of Be Love

Today we’d like to introduce you to KamGi & Kyle Finch.

Hi KamGi & Kyle, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
We met in Thailand in 2001 as we were on separate soul journeys that brought us together. We fell in love and were married nearly two years later. The original seeds of Be Love Apparel were sown in 2004 as we were expecting our first baby – Jai. The creative vibrations were flowing strong & the vision for Be Love came in clear! We were already very active in social justice causes and the peace movement in Los Angeles and we knew that we wanted to create a way to earn an income while being in service to causes that we cared about. We decided to take our experience from former careers in art, design, education, and branding to create Be Love – and through it raise funds and awareness for empowering projects that uplift our community. We went to work and began making this vision a reality – creating ethical apparel and original graphic art that communicate inspiring messages of justice, universal Love and Truth. The Be Love brand was born! It has been a slow and steady journey for us, we began on the road by selling at various outdoor market places and festivals all over the state of California. If only someone had footage of us in our old Oldsmobile heading off to various festivals, with our two babies, car packed to the gills with Be Love, and the four of us often sleeping – camping style – in our exhibit booth. It was tough work and really fun at times. Ultimately we made it work and slowly grew the brand!

About one year in we started to open up wholesale accounts primarily in the yoga and wellness space. Due to the unique interconnected nature of the wider yoga and wellness community, Be Love eventually opened over 500 retail accounts with a presence in 12 countries. Wholesale was our biggest sales channel until the pandemic hit. Unfortunately, many of the retailers that we sold to will not re-open. Over the last year, we’ve had to recalibrate and put a ton of energy into learning e-commerce and growing our website sales which is a whole new learning curve ~ we managed to double our online sales! The apparel business is not for the faint-hearted…especially when you are doing your own production. So much time and effort goes into the making of a garment, and you can only hope that everything goes according to plan. Because the fashion industry produces so much waste, it is very important to us that the clothing we produce is of the highest quality and made to last and be loved for a long time. Be Love arises from our values. Our brand image is forged from authenticity and is a direct reflection of who we are and what we believe. We have built Be Love to be a vehicle for service and feel that there has never been a better time for the messages that we put out into the world.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Haha…starting and growing a small business is definitely not always a smooth road! It has been both super challenging while at the same time we have been so incredibly supported in all kinds of amazing and beautiful ways over the years. The biggest struggle for us has probably been (and still is) a lack of the working capital needed to expand and not having the resources to make the moves we felt were/are necessary at strategic times such as growing our team or introducing new styles to our collection. Being in survival mode uses up so much energy! We started Be Love with a $1500 gift from KamGi’s Mum, and from there we created our first designs with the help of a talented friend, printed our first tees and sold them on weekends at farmers markets, street fairs and festivals – with our babies in tow. We have had to grow our brand slowly over time but also see the blessings in this, as the decisions we have made have always been intentional and carefully considered. Our current goal is to be able to offer all our clothing in an inclusive – full size – range as we really want to see Be Love on all body shapes. It takes more money to produce in larger quantities, so we are adding to our collections slowly but surely. It is frustrating to not be able to move more quickly on this, as we know it makes sense on all levels! We now have wholesale accounts in Japan, Canada, Denmark, Australia and Germany. We have experienced growth, and our brand is loved by those that know us. We are still in a position where we would welcome an investment from the right partner who shares our vision and mission…just taking this opportunity to put that prayer out into the world!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Be Love is a small family run business (truly grassroots!). We are based out of Topanga Canyon. We sell online at www.beloveapparel.com and also have a shop in the Topanga Canyon Courtyard by the General Store. We’re here seven days a week, with occasional time off, but you’re rarely off the clock when you run a small business. We have lived and loved in the Canyon for the last 18 years ~ renting the same little 900 sq. ft. house all this time ~ both our children were born here :)) Be Love is known for our inspiring & love centered graphic art that is hand-printed onto the softest tees, tanks and tops. 95% of our collection is ethically made by us here in Los Angeles – using the highest quality sustainable and organic fabrics. A small percentage of our items are ordered as finished blanks that we print our graphics on. We are most proud of the fact that through Be Love, we have been able to power amazing giveback campaigns that help people in need.

Our current ‘I Choose Love’ campaign was initiated at the beginning of the pandemic and we have been donating all profits from a selection of Be Love items that feature our original ‘I Choose Love’ graphic to Together Rising (501c3). Together Rising’s Covid Relief Response has been helping support families facing food shortages and evictions. We have donated over $22,000 with this campaign so far. Over the years, we have also donated to Alexandria House, an amazing nonprofit that provides safe and supportive housing for women and children in the process of moving from emergency shelter to economic stability and we ran a campaign with our ‘We Are Family’ design that supported families separated at the border. It is our hope that our brand helps remind people that we are all essentially family and that if we work & stand together, we have a chance to restore balance in a world that is currently so divided. People understand – now more than ever – that they are able to use their buying power to express and support their principles and beliefs. We hope that our clothing is a way of expressing our shared humanity. A passion for giving back is woven into the fabric of Be Love.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
KamGi’s Memory – Every summer my mum and my two sisters would travel from England to visit my grandparents and six aunts in Switzerland for the school holidays. Our journey always felt like a big adventure. The excitement would begin by being allowed to go to our local candy store and buy what seemed like a ton of sweeties (coca cola bottles, flying saucers, parma violets, tic tacs, sweethearts, red vines) for the journey. Dad would drive us to the ferry, and every year my stomach would be in knots because I dreaded saying goodbye to him (he had a Chinese restaurant, so he would have to stay back and work). Our sad goodbyes were ridiculously drawn out, as we had to walk down an overlong passageway to the ferry and we would keep turning around to wave until we couldn’t see him anymore. But once he was out of sight, excitement set in. We would travel by Ferry from Dover to Calais in France and then catch the overnight train to Luzern which was my favorite part. Once we got settled in our ‘Couchette’ compartment, Mum would unpack sandwiches from her small red leather suitcase and we would watch France zoom by outside the window. I LOVED falling asleep in the bunks on the sleeper train, stopping in stations and hearing different languages spoken, and just generally feeling we were in a foreign place outside of the usual routine. Good times!

Kyle’s Memory – I was always a rascal so most of my memories contain some degree of shenanigans – some humorous and some not so much. I played football from age 8 through my time at college. When about 11 years old my team was holding t’s annual banquet and awards ceremony – celebrating a championship season. All of the team, the coaches, cheerleaders, parents, families were there and I was super excited – tapped for team MVP. But sometime between the dinner and the trophy announcements a few of us boys went off to chase the girls running through the lobby hallways. For some reason, I thought it would be fun to try out the fire extinguisher – not knowing that it was filled with a fire-retardant powder that once released could not be disengaged until the entire contents were out. Well, the entire banquet hall filled with white smoke and powder covered everything and everybody there. It was a fine mess indeed. This would have been a real bad scene for me – because my dad was old school and could be quite severe – but fortunately they still awarded me the MVP trophy and just enough goodwill to prevent the punishment that would have made the memory quite a bit more painful.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@beloveapparel.com
• Website: www.beloveapparel.com
• Instagram: @beloveapparel

Image Credits:
Paul Schefz