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Who’s Who: Darin Roche
By Mike Butler
We all know someone with red hair! At least, we should! I’ve been fortunate to not only sprinkle my friendship circle with gingers but I also am the proud husband of a pretty stunning redhead, if you’ve ever seen him. With the holidays coming up, I have found the perfect gifts for my redheaded hubby through a clothing company called Ginger Authentic Clothing! And in finding this company, I found its founder, Darin Roche. Take a read.
Darin was born and raised in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At the age of 16 he found himself thinking about what he wanted to be when he grew up and entrepreneurship has always had a place in his mind and heart. “I would think about what I could do to change the world, always known by my friends as the guy with the ideas,” Darin says. “The problem at the time was that I could never get any of my ideas past the ‘money’ phase. Although business plans were drafted for many of my ideas, I just did not know how to get past that initial stage. Then, I met my wife, Sheva Solomon. Now, I am the father of 4 children: 3 girls under the age of 9, and a 20 year old son, all who I must say are gingers. We now live in Wolfville and our mini ginger revolution has begun!”
Darin was the sponsorship director for the Atlantic Film Festival (now Atlantic International Film Festival) for three years, but his entrepreneur mind came back to the forefront, and in 2016 he started a company that serves the non-profit sector. The Partnership Company was born and it connects non-profits and corporate brands to foster unique partnerships in the sponsorship marketing industry. He works with organizations on building strong sponsorship strategies that will help them generate corporate sponsorship to add to their current funding portfolio and he finds the work very rewarding.
In summer 2018, Darin had a conversation with Sheva about how to spend more time with their kids in a small meaningful business model, while providing an outlet for creativity and inspiration. “Our girls all love to draw, and drawing to them means ideas that are sparked through imagination, which I thought would be a great starting point to creating this small business model. And both Sheva and I knew that we wanted was to have a correlation to their ginger locks and so, Authentic Ginger Clothing Company was created.”
The business idea was there and so Darin and Sheva started the research and this was the exciting part. They knew they wanted to raise their kids to be aware of what could potentially happen in the future with other kids making fun of their hair colour and so on, so they did a global search and found there was between 50-100 redhead festivals. After phone calls, conversations, and realizing there was a need for more “proud to be ginger” products, the Authentic Ginger Clothing Company was branded with the message: Be Authentic. Be Ginger. Be Proud!
When Darin is not dressing the redheads of the world, he is a huge hockey super fan, a runner, a drummer and singer, and spent several years working in the music business, writing original music and touring North America. He’s also an avid photographer, doing the odd wedding, landscapes, portraits and more. He loves gardening, crafting, family time, hiking, beach days, cycling (along the railroad trails here in Wolfville), playing golf, and recently reading, now that he can finally see the pages with his new specs!
Darin’s mind is always racing with new ideas and plans. He’s hoping to reach as many redheads as he can with his company and partner with a non-profit organization to help reduce the stigma attached to red hair. He aspires to be a successful entrepreneur, to always continue learning, and to give back to his community with the bonus of enjoying life with his family. Thank you Darin for being so authentic, ginger, and proud! All the best!
