Esoteric: intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.

For Rowan Lapi, soccer is her esoteric thing, and she wants to share the definition of esoteric with the world.

Lapi’s been playing soccer for most of her life, grinding to get where she is as a star of the Penn State women’s soccer team. Lapi played for four years at Northwestern before returning to her native state of Pennsylvania as a graduate student, tallying three goals and one assist so far this season.

Lapi has always had a connection with words and rhetoric but didn’t expect a freshman seminar to have such an impact on her life. While reading an article for class, she came across the word “esoteric” and looked it up.

“I just really resonated with it,” Lapi said. “When I saw the definition of the word, I just had this moment where I was like, ‘Wow, that would have really given me a lot of comfort in moments where I felt a little lonely or maybe felt a little different than the rest of the people where I grew up.’ I grew up in a very small town in Lancaster, [Pennsylvania], and a lot of people didn’t really understand what I was trying to do with soccer.”

Growing up and fighting to get to where she is today, Lapi had a lot of lonely hours. She had private victories and losses to go through by herself because no one else could understand them. Finding esoteric made her realize how many people have those things and may feel alienated because of them.

“Seeing that word and just understanding, honestly, most people have that esoteric thing, and there’s this thing that they’re super passionate about, or have that specialized knowledge in. Maybe it’s what drives them in their job, or what drives them in their life. Doesn’t have to be a job, might just be their passion,” Lapi said.

For four to five years since she came across this word, building a brand around esoteric has been Lapi’s “own personal brainchild.” From the beginning of her college career, she’s always been thinking about everyone’s esoteric thing and helping people realize them.

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“I was like, ‘Man, how cool would it be to bring together all those people that really relate to the world and feel like they have this esoteric thing?'” Lapi said. “How cool would it be to bring these people together to share ideas and just have this sense of community?

“That’s how it started. I just figured the best way to do that would maybe be through something like clothing, where you have the clothing, or maybe you think the clothing looks cool, but that’s something that can bring together these people that have their esoteric thing.”

Once she got to Penn State, Lapi took the leap and launched the Esoteric brand she has today. At Northwestern, she majored in economics while minoring in business and entrepreneurship. After graduating, she still had two years of NCAA eligibility left and came to Happy Valley to be close to home, play for Penn State, and get her MBA.

Lapi realized some of the classes were repeating information she already knew and started working on her brand on the side, when she had free time or if class got a lot too monotonous.

Lapi’s grandfather started a small business that her father took over, so entrepreneurship has been in her family. As a kid, she hosted lemonade stands and took care of lawns, so she showed interest in it from an early age.

While she started truly working on it last year, it only took Lapi a few months to get it off the ground. She had some money saved up, so it only took her around two to three months to set up an LLC and get the website running.

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Of course, with starting any business, Lapi had lots of trial and error. She taught herself how to do a lot, learning online how to start a clothing brand and learning from her mistakes while largely being a one-woman show.

Lapi’s Penn State teammate, Ava Minnier, helps with some of the design, attributing to the creative process as Lapi is more focused on the business ends of things. Lapi comes up with the overall concept and turns to Minnier or her other friends to mock up designs and then they work together to tweak it and come up with the final designs.

Lapi has built connections with suppliers around the world, knowing where to go for the best quality item she is making. She had lots of trial and error again with finding the right supplier and the perfect quality she was looking for, but over the past year, Lapi’s nailed down her people and has someone to turn to for the best T-shirt or best jersey blend off the top of her head.

However, as Lapi mentioned, esoteric things can be different for everyone, so making a brand that works for everyone requires a lot of thought. The perfect solution for that right now? Different drops.

Lapi has a standard Esoteric item on the website, a definition t-shirt for people to see as they find the brand. The shirt was one of the first ideas — she had to share with everyone what drew her in and show the core of the brand.

The definition T-shirt is something that will probably always be on the site, but otherwise, Lapi has different themed drops with a different realm of esoteric things each time.

“I think the cool thing about the brand, but also the hard part, is because people’s esoteric things are so different, it’s hard to almost find a certain style or a niche area that I would want to segment or target. So the purpose of the drops is to do something a little bit different each time to appease all these esoteric people,” Lapi said.

So far, each drop has been inspired by her family members. A camp drop was more outdoorsy and inspired by her sister who goes to Oregon and has triathlons and camping as her esoteric things. A yacht drop was inspired by her cousin who has his own boating company and is a boat mechanic, his esoteric thing.

The next drop soon to be released is the brand’s first hoodie, winter-themed and inspired by skiing and snowboarding.

Despite being a young brand and balancing it all while being a student-athlete, Lapi said the Penn State community has been supportive throughout the journey.

Her teammates and coaches supported Lapi from the beginning, helping keep everything afloat and helping spread the brand. With so many different grades on the team, everyone has different friends and family members to share Esoteric with.

“I think just having such a good, close-knit team and community. My coaches were some of the first people to buy this stuff, and they’re trying to help me push it out any way I can and are super, super supportive of it, which I don’t think other teams necessarily would because it might take away from soccer and being focused, but they’re just so for it,” Lapi said. “I couldn’t ask for a better support system from them. They’ve been so great with it so far.”

Penn State’s alumni system is one of the strongest in the world, but there’s an extra special bond for sports team alumni as well. Penn State women soccer’s coaches promoted Esoteric to easily receptive alumni.

“We have Ali Krieger, who’s doing so much for women’s soccer, women’s sports, and I was able to take pictures with her and give her some of my stuff,” Lapi said. “I’ve made certain packages when we go travel. My coaches, they’re certainly trying to help push it out to the Penn State alumni network and just everyone who we had come through our Penn State program.”

Despite the early success in the drops, Lapi isn’t planning on settling on just clothing for the Esoteric brand but instead wants to turn it into an Esoteric collective. She wants to add elements such as a podcast or a run club where people can meet up and foster a community.

Esoteric is “at the very baby, early stages of the brand,” Lapi said. Being on the Penn State women’s soccer team is no small feat, especially when the team has made the NCAA Tournament for the past 30 years and is gearing up to play TCU in the second round on Friday, November 22. While Lapi balanced both and got her brand off the ground in a short amount of time, she plans to dedicate more time and grow it down the road.

“Looking forward in the future, like five to 10 years, I would love for it to be more than just clothing and [become] just this space where these people can come and feel like they belong. And not only that, but just engage in these great relationships with people that have an esoteric thing other than that,” Lapi said.

Folks who are interested in supporting Lapi’s brand and buying Esoteric merch can do so here.