Though their ambitions are deeply important and serious, A Touch More actually traces its roots to a rather hilarious moment in their relationship.
Raven B. Varona/A Touch More
Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe want to bring A Touch More to the stories that influence sports and culture.
The sports power couple launched their new production company, A Touch More, with the goal of sharing untold stories that center trailblazers from underrepresented communities." In conjunction with sports media company Togethxr, they'll highlight "those who shape and move culture forward" in the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities and beyond, while questioning the status quo of why and how we share what we do.
"Hopefully what A Touch More ends up doing is constantly asking the question: 'Why?'" Bird said in a video shared exclusively with Insider. "'Why is this done this way?' And then trying to frame things around that instead of falling into a mold, falling into the cookie cutter."
AP Photo/Chris O'Meara
"How can we look at things from a different perspective," Rapinoe added. "Maybe an event, how is it for this group of people? I think that, hopefully, will be our differentiator."
Though their ambitions with A Touch More are both deeply important and serious, the brand actually traces its roots to a rather lighthearted, hilarious moment in their relationship. Early in the pandemic, the now-fiancées started a weekly Instagram Live series in which they had fun and "let people into our lives a little bit" and bring "some levity and some joy" during an otherwise trying time across the globe.
The episodes — which featured iconic guests like Sydney Leroux and Diana Taurasi — gained traction across the web as the superstar athletes, "who are normally a little more guarded with being that loose," let themselves get more personal than ever before.
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In one such moment during the second episode of the series, Bird explained that she "was getting in the shower, and I was like 'Do I look any different?' and Megan said, 'there's a layer.'"
Rapinoe quickly defended herself, insisting that "that's not how I said it! I said, 'There's a touch more!'"
Nearly three years later, a production company was born.
"The name comes from us not being able to work out as much as we normally had, and you asked if you put on your pandemic pounds," Rapinoe recalled in A Touch More's extended launch video. "And I said 'Maybe a touch more.'"
"Honesty is the best policy," she added with a laugh.
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Though the Instagram Live series was fun, silly, and inconsequential at the time, Bird realized a love of production throughout the process of curating each week's content. The WNBA legend said she got "really into" figuring out each segment and properly timing the music.
Soon enough, she and Rapinoe realized that "creating and making stories, helping people tell their stories, that brings me a lot of joy."
Now, rather than sharing anecdotes from their lives and the lives of their friends, Rapinoe says their intention is to "be architecting the landscape around women's sports."
Action Images via Reuters/Peter Cziborra
"Such a huge part of that is storytelling," she added. "You hear all the time, 'Oh, women have such interesting stories' or 'We've had to do it a different way' or just the creativity that is required to be a successful female athlete in the business sense. But what is that? What does that actually look like?"
A Touch More is ready to find out. Check out the full clip:
