The Biography of Rachel Louise

We are going to start with a quick background story. Rachel has a very interesting background that eventually led to the founding of Spooshi Co.

She Loves to Create

Rachel’s first college degree track was in Architectural Engineering, which proved to be too heavy on engineering and too light on creativity. In architecture classes she designed houses for her kids’ characters instead of people. Long story extremely short, with a desire to move away from math and become a better communicator, she finished her undergraduate at the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Science in Communications. Ultimately, she graduated with a Juris Doctorate from the University of Miami School of Law – this included time at Pepperdine School of Law as a visiting student where she swam in their amazing 100-yard pool and surfed in the ocean often. All of her college notebooks ended-up full of doodles—especially caterpillars.

Rachel spent a short time as a juvenile prosecutor and as a lawyer for a non-profit legal firm but continued to pursue her creative interests in her free time. Wanting experience in the business world in hopes of learning enough to have her own company one day, Rachel worked for the family manufacturing business where her boss let her buy the entire Adobe Creative Suite for a particular project, so she could also have access to the Adobe Illustrator program. She took courses in Adobe Illustrator and won an award for her children's artwork that involved Peanut Butter Pauley and Po adventuring together. She is forever grateful for that initial Adobe purchase that helped her on her way to making us characters come to life— thanks Bob! One last job as In-House Counsel for a corporation doing lots of legal research led our creator, Rachel, to "retire" from the legal profession and pursue Spooshi Co. Woo-hoo for us!

What’s a Spooshi?

Now on to the more fun stuff. First, we would like to explain the story behind the company name Rachel chose. Spooshi is the singular of the word spooshies. Spooshies are objects found floating in the sky on Spooshi Island. When we, Up Cat and Po-Po, first discovered Spooshi Island, the sky was full of small, warm, squishy, sparkly objects. Up Cat caught one and named them spooshies. The island sky is forever full of morphing, magical spooshies, thus, in turn, the island name is Spooshi Island, and the company name is Spooshi Co. This reflects the magical nature of the island and the company.

Another point of interest might be how Rachel came to name characters like us The Poolees. We love to swim, and we hunt in our seaplane for islands with swimming pools where we can take a dip. Spooshi Island has a magic swimming pool. We can jump in the pool and gain magical powers. Rachel felt it fit to name us The Poolees since the pool is most likely where you will find us.

Rachel started Spooshi Co. to tell the story of Spooshi Island and the adventures of the characters living on the island, but the overall goal of the company is to make kids happy (she feels it would be nice to make parents happy along the way, also)!

Swim Safety

In addition to creating products kids can enjoy, Spooshi Co. is dedicated to promoting swim safety for kids. Rachel spent her early years swimming and diving in swimming pools and later went on to learn to surf in the ocean. Swimming has brought her much joy, comfort, exercise, and relaxation throughout her lifetime.

Unfortunately, drowning is a leading cause, if the not the number one cause, of unintentional death for children under the age of 4. Beyond that age, drowning remains a leader in unintentional deaths in the United States. Spooshi Island is a magical place surrounded by beautiful ocean water, and it houses the amazing Magic Maji Pool. It is a goal as the company grows to keep children safe around water and teach the wonder of swimming to all folks far and wide.

Spooshi Co. is located in Decatur, IL. Decatur is Rachel’s hometown.