Brittney Buccat: Founder of Wild Rina

Brittney Buccat was born and raised in the Bay Area, always surrounded by other Asian Americans. With a longstanding interest in fashion, she started a fashion tumblr in high school and began partnering with brands on Instagram while in college. After graduating a few years ago, she started Wild Rina - an online boutique that sells romantic mixed modern boho pieces. 

I spoke with Brittney about why she feels like the Bay Area can be a bubble, how recent anti-Asian hate crimes have helped her unlearn stereotypes about Asian Americans, and how her interest in fashion taught her about influencer marketing and propelled her to start Wild Rina. 

Photo courtesy of Brittney Buccat

Rebecca: Can you tell me about your parents and how they came to the United States? 

Brittney: Both of my parents are from the Philippines. My dad came to the US as a young adult, because his dad was in the Navy. At the time, if you served in the Navy, you could bring your family to the US. On my mom’s side, she has eight siblings, and they all decided to immigrate here one by one as young adults.

I went to the Philippines with my parents for the first time after I graduated college, and that was when I started to better understand what their lives were like before they immigrated to the US. It’s hard for me to imagine being 20 years old, picking your life up, and starting over in a new country where you only have a few family members to support you - but that’s what my mom did. 

Rebecca: Can you tell me about your upbringing, especially as it relates to being Asian American? 

Brittney: I've lived in the Bay Area since I was born, and I've never experienced life outside of the Bay Area. Reflecting on that sentence, it says a lot about how I’ve grown up almost in this huge bubble. In some parts of the Bay, Asians are the majority and I used to think the rest of the world was like this. Growing up with other Asian Americans, we didn’t talk much about what it meant to be Chinese American versus Filipino American. We all just thought of ourselves as Asian American. I never felt much separation from my Chinese American or Japanese American or other Asian American friends. 

My dad is Filipino, and my mom is half-Chinese and half-Filipino. However, I never experienced anything from my Chinese culture, so I grew up thinking I was full Filipino. My upbringing was very family-oriented and very Catholic. I spent weekends with my family and we’d go to church together every Sunday. I have a huge family with a lot of cousins; we would also visit my grandparents often. We ate Filipino food all the time and had large family parties for holidays like Christmas and Easter. 

My parents weren’t especially strict on me, especially not compared to my other Asian American friends’ parents. They wanted me to do my best, but never forced me to sit down and study on the weekends. My parents have the mentality that as long as you can provide for your family, that should be enough. They want me to be happy and secure, but they never pressured me to be the best or earn the most money. When I was growing up, my mom let me quit piano lessons when I said I was bored of them. She wasn’t a stereotypical Asian mom who forced me to keep playing piano even when I didn’t want to. 

Rebecca: When you were younger, how did you feel about being Asian American? 

Brittney: When I was younger, I was definitely proud of being Asian. I had friends of different ethnicities and it was easy to be proud and share our culture with one another. I’m still proud to be Asian, but the bubble has burst for me and I realize there’s a lot of learning to be done. 

After recent events such as the shooting in Atlanta, I’m trying to unlearn what my parents have taught me about Asians being silent about politics or being the model minority. Whenever I watch the news with my parents, they comment that tension or violence between Black people and white people have nothing to do with Asians. I want to unlearn this habit of saying these events have nothing to do with me, because no matter what ethnicity you are, we’re all human. My parents have always told me that if something doesn’t directly involve me, I shouldn’t care. But I’m realizing I do care, and I want to make more of an effort to learn and talk about these events more with my parents. 

In the past, I’d hear some of my friends talk about our role as Asian Americans in supporting our community and other minorities, but I wouldn’t really internalize what they were saying. I’d see these posts on social media and scroll past them. Now, I find it very inspiring to see people using their voices on social media, and I’m encouraged to read about what’s happening in the Asian American community and better understand what resources are available. 

I’ve tried talking about recent events with my siblings, but they’re a little more on the quiet side. In our upbringing, we weren’t taught to have an opinion. For me, the first step is to be informed so that I can have opinions. I used to be like my sister and either not really care or ignore what’s happening, because it’s not directly relevant to us. I’m trying to be more aware and empathetic and not regard what I’m hearing on the news as normal. 

Rebecca: That’s great that recent events have made you reflect more about your identity and your role as an Asian American. I think that’s one of the positives that has come out of the anti-Asian hate crimes recently - more people are encouraged to learn more and use their voices. I’d like to pivot a little; can you tell me about how you started Wild Rina? 

Brittney: I’ve always been interested in fashion. In high school, I had a fashion tumblr and that kicked off my spirit for being present in the fashion community on social media. I used tumblr to create an online store where I sold upcycled vintage clothes. For college, I went to San Jose State and lived at home. All of my friends left our area for college, and I felt really lonely. I started seeing fashion bloggers on instagram and thought that was something I wanted to try out. I did that throughout college, and it helped me learn so much about social media marketing and influencer marketing. 

I started thinking about owning a store while I was working on my blog in college. During all of my marketing classes, I thought about how I could apply what I was learning to my store in real life. I started thinking about who I would ask to collaborate with, what the style would be, and how I would use influencer marketing. After I graduated from college, I traveled with my parents for a year to the Philippines and other parts of Asia. I wasn’t looking for a full time job at the time, so I decided to just go ahead and start my store. I thought if I got a full time job, I would just make excuses about not having enough time. I pushed myself and told myself that there wasn’t ever going to be the perfect time, so I should just launch it now. I launched Wild Rina in 2018 within six months of graduating from college. 

Starting Wild Rina was difficult; it’s a non-traditional path for me to take, especially because the rest of my family works in healthcare. Growing up, I always thought I wanted to be a nurse, because that’s all I saw. I didn’t even know I could choose my own career. In college, I started out studying marine biology, but eventually switched into marketing. As a fashion blogger on Instagram, I grew my following to the point where I could get paid for sponsorships. My mom was surprised that I could actually make money this way, and that’s when she started to really believe in my creative capability and entrepreneurial spirit. 

Rebecca: How do you decide what types of styles you promote in your store? 

Brittney: The best thing about the store is that it’s a reflection of myself, and it’s easier to curate things when they’re true to myself. I have guidelines for who we serve and who the perfect demographic is, but I also personally love all the clothes that we have. When I’m picking clothes to sell, I’ll go off trends and eventually you pick up on what sells better. You’re always iterating on who the perfect customer is as time goes on. This was difficult for me in the beginning, because I had to learn what pieces would sell well. There were some pieces that I really loved and thought would sell quickly, but then they actually wouldn’t. Then there were other pieces that I thought were okay, but they sold really fast. It’s a huge learning curve, especially in the beginning, and I’m definitely still learning. Each collection has improved little by little. 

Rebecca: What are some other lessons you’ve learned so far from starting Wild Rina? 

Brittney: One thing I’m still learning is how to balance work and play; this has been a big struggle for me. With COVID, I’m stuck at home, so I’ve been pouring too much of myself into work. I don’t know how to find time to relax, and I have an endless list of things I can work on for my store. My mom wanted me to work hard when I was younger, but now when she sees me working late, she’ll tell me that I should sleep early and work less. 

Rebecca: What are your short-term and long-term goals for your store? 

Brittney: My short-term goal is to continue scaling and growing the store until I can run it full time. In the long run, I want to have a team to help support the store, so I can have the freedom to choose what I get to work on. I have a very creative and entrepreneurial spirit, so I don’t necessarily want to be constricted to working on the store for my entire life. In the future, I might want to open a cafe or work on other projects.