Danielle and Gabrielle Scott fell in love with figure skating several years ago. The identical twins have fully embraced the sport and have their own sports apparel line.
By Jillian L. Martinez
When identical twin sisters Danielle and Gabrielle Scott, 19, started figure skating, they had little knowledge of the sport and never thought their participation would lead to running a business one day.
“We started [figure skating] pretty late, but we defied a lot of odds,” Gabrielle said.
In 2016, the Scott sisters were living in Florida and looking for activities to do for the summer. In their search, the young women found figure skating on YouTube. From there, Danielle and Gabrielle tried a public skating session at the Panthers IceDen (home of the Panthers Figure Skating Club) and fell in love with the sport.
“We were able to skip five levels in a year and have been able to compete at regionals and do really well,” Gabrielle said. “Now, we’re at the senior level and train six days a week.”
Despite spending much of their time at the ice rink, the sisters became the founders and owners of Emiactive, described as “a high-end sports apparel company that specializes in making clothes and accessories that are technically functional and warm at the same time.”
“We started our clothing brand Emiactive in 2019,” Danielle said. “We wanted to name the company after our sister [Brynn] because she had sacrificed so much and always came to the ice rink to watch us.”
The company, which pays homage to the Scotts’ sister’s middle name, Emily, officially launched in September 2021 with gloves. When the Scotts began their journey in skating, they struggled to find gloves that were warm and durable. As a result, they worked to design and test gloves that would meet their standards.
“We went through a rigorous testing period for a couple of months before we launched our products,” Gabrielle said. “We wanted something that had a fleece lining but was not too thick. They needed to be thin and warm at the same time.”
After testing many different fabrics and working with manufacturers, Emiactive released gloves that would perform best for figure skaters on the ice. The result was the Technically Warm Gloves collection, which come in seven colors and has a technology thumbprint. Since then, the company has expanded to more clothing and accessories that appeal not only to figure skaters but to other athletes.
“There’s a lot of brands out there that basically make yoga clothes. There’s not really a lot of figure skating-specific clothing,” Danielle said. “We thought to be different, we needed to make something that caters to figure skaters. We’ve also seen people from different lifestyles [who are not skaters] use our items.”
Thanks to the power of social media and brand ambassadors, Emiactive has been able to extend its reach to customers across the world. In addition to the gloves that started it all, Emiactive sells water bottles, T-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, ear warmers and leggings (which is one of the company’s best sellers). According to the Scott sisters, their company receives positive testimonials from customers and has a zero percent product return rate.
“Our favorite part about running a company is the feedback we receive from our customers. They really love our leggings, and they love the diversity that we have in our brand,” Danielle said.
“We also like to see people wearing our products,” Gabrielle added. “We created this brand for athletes like us. So, if a product wouldn’t work for us, then it wouldn’t work for [our customers]. That’s why we really strive for quality.”
Emiactive would like to continue growing their brand and expanding to more innovative products and designs. Although the main focus of Emiactive is selling apparel, the company has expanded its platform to feature blog articles inspired by the Scotts and their Instagram followers.
These topics range from food and health to different style tips. Followers have reached out and shared how valuable these posts have been to succeeding in competitions and different aspects of life. One day, the Scott sisters would like to share their voices in a podcast to further their advice on skating. More than anything, though, the Scotts want their impact on the sport to lead to an increase in diversity and representation of different communities in figure skating.
“We want to see more people who look like us enter the sport, because there’s not many people who look like us in the sport,” Gabrielle said.
“Our goal is to have different types of people in the sport and to promote [inclusivity] across our brand,” Danielle added. “We hope young athletes will look up to us and see that anything is possible. And, if you have an idea, then you can make it come to life.”
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