Meet Rachel, co-op developer + crafter
January 23, 2024
Rachel Dominguez-Benner’s entrepreneur journey spans the continent.
Her creative venture first launched in Portland, Oregon, sparked from a seed planted in Mexico, and spurred on by an art class in Penland, North Carolina. Today, Rachel crafts her home goods gift line from a home studio in an east Dayton neighborhood. You can buy beautiful Rachel DB Creative products at smattering of local retailers.
“My most popular [product] is kitchen towels,” she said. “I wanted a product that people own multiples of already, that they’ll buy more than once, that would make a great gift, because I love giving gifts. And something that…could be art and was useful, and was made of natural materials. So through all those things, we get to the humble kitchen towel.”
When she’s not screen-printing her original designs on a variety of objects, she is developing co-ops. She specializes in communications and member engagement for cooperative businesses.
“It’s my interface with capitalism. I’m just going to be straight up and say it,” she said. “Rachel DB Creative is how I am taking control of my own labor and deciding how I want to interact with using my labor in exchange for money. And so that’s also why there are the two pieces. Because there’s the tangible, beautiful, bringing art into your everyday products, and that’s great. But there’s also a lot of work to be done in helping reimagine our future together. And that’s why I’m so drawn to working with cooperatives and developing cooperative businesses.”
Check out Rachel’s full story in the latest episode in our I Am an Entrepreneur series.
