Meet April Liang | Co-Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with April Liang and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi April, is there a quote or affirmation that’s meaningful to you?
Every failure is not a failure, but a lesson learned. This quote means so much to me in business and in life. One of my mentors that I worked closely with for about 5 years before she passed told me this and it stuck ever since. To me, this quote is everything. It shows the mentality of a person and how they perceive things in life. Yes things can get hard, but I am also very positive and always try to see what I learned from a situation, try to understand what I could have done better or see that things happen for a reason and move on. Even in a work environment, mistakes happen, and as long as you learn from it or improve, no matter how big or small you get to choose if you want to become better from it.

What should our readers know about your business?
I think the unique part of the brand is our experiential arm, whether it is our in person or digital activations we feel that it is still important to be able to give something back to the community that is tangible. With our experiences, we push athletes to learn something new about themselves and hope to inspire them to feel like they are capable of more than they think. The feeling that you get when you see someone push past what they thought they could is what the brand represents and that is why we do it. Nothing in business comes easy, especially when it is your own. Getting here and still progressing forward, there will always be challenges that come up, the biggest thing that lead us to where we are is being flexible and adaptable. Not being afraid of change and challenging new ideas. Don’t compare yourself to others – this has been huge as we look for inspiration, but we look to carve our own path and create our own lane.  Our apparel is also all designed, produced, and manufactured in the US. Our fabric supplier that we work with is innovative in technology fabric finishes, they also develop technologies for large global active brands, which we have access to. When it comes to textile innovation, we have a chance to work with anti-microbial, silver finishes, moisture wicking, and different 4-way stretch fabrics. Our access to these fabric innovations adds to the bodies we create, which means cool designs and extreme functionality for you, the athlete.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I LOVE food so that is definitely how every day would be planned out and I am also kind of a floater so planning is not always the best for me. Some areas that I would take them just to visit for shopping or just to see would be calamigos ranch (M cafe), venice beach, Abbot Kinney, smorgasbord and melrose. Places to eat in downtown – the list could go on forever especially if we traveled outside of downtown. My favorite places in downtown would be woodspoon, shekarchi, rosso blu, monzo, BADMAASH, and sushi enya. There have been a-lot of restaurants that have shut down due to COVID and I am hoping the ones that are still here make it through! Support you local restaurants if you can! ,

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I can’t even list the amount of people I would shoutout, but anyone who has supported, guided, purchased, helped out deserves a HUGE thank you. The brand would be nothing without the support of the people and community who believed in the brand from the start… and also Guy Raz, it is always extra motivating to hear his “how I built this” podcast and can relate to all the entrepreneurs struggles before their success.

Website: www.painkllr.com
Instagram: painkllrofficial