Melanie Bell grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and launched her business here on July 16, 2022. “Bell Leotards is thriving and I’m just getting started,” she says.
The leotards are designed, packaged and shipped out of Knoxville, with the garment production outsourced to a manufacturer outside of Tennessee.
Melanie Bell (photo from LinkedIn)
“After working as a designer for a leotard company, spending countless hours sketching and designing for elite gymnasts and having one of my designs featured at the Olympics, I knew it would take a huge leap of faith to start my own leotard company,” Bell says. “Some people said it couldn’t be done, but here we are.”
Bell Leotards is blazing the trail in the gymnastics industry as one of the only black-owned, woman-owned gymnastic leotard companies in the nation, she says.
While previously working for a well-known gymnastics apparel company, Bell had designs featured in the 2020 Summer Olympics, making the main stage multiple times with elite gymnasts, and ultimately pushing her to start Bell Leotards where she has more freedom than ever to create quality practice and competition leotards.
After graduation from Carson-Newman University, Bell dreamed of owning a company. What was “a dream inside a young designer’s imagination” five years ago is now a thriving business. Inventory ranges from practice tanks to competition leotards. Ambitious? Yes.
“I’m getting involved in fulfilling the design needs of every college, club and professional organization that wishes to receive quality leos from a world-leading designer,” she says.
Seeing gymnasts post on social media, wearing a Bell Leotards outfit has “lit a fire that will never go out,” Bell says. “I’m here to stay, work hard and, most importantly, design.
“Bell Leotards is for all the bold, bright, fierce, wild, super-talented gymnasts that shine in the world.”