We were told to drop it. So we gave it its own home.
A note from Nick and Rebecca on why Type 1 is becoming Onboard by Palmr.
For about two years, we ran Palmr as two things at once. A Florida family lifestyle brand, and a brand with Type 1 diabetes woven through it. We did it because both are true to our family, and we were not willing to pretend otherwise.
People used to ask us, half-joking, what palm trees and Type 1 diabetes could possibly have in common. The honest answer is our kids. Two of them live with Type 1, and they are happiest in the water. They take their equipment off, they swim, and they have told us that in the water they forget they have it at all. That is the connection. Palmr is the life we want for them. Type 1 is the thing we want them to get a break from. For us, the two were never really separate.
Still, the advice we got, over and over, from people who knew what they were talking about, was the same every time. You cannot do both. It muddies the marketing. It muddies the messaging. People will not know what you are. Pick one. And the one they kept telling us to drop was Type 1.
We understood the logic. One voice was trying to carry two lives at once, and neither got the room it deserved. They were right about that part. They were wrong about the fix.
So to everyone who told us to drop the Type 1 part: with love, you can kiss our pancreas. We did the opposite of dropping it. We gave it its own home.
That home is Onboard by Palmr.
The name comes from a question every Type 1 family knows by heart. Before we give our kids more insulin, we have to know how much is still onboard, how much is already in their body, still working. It is the kind of math a Type 1 family does dozens of times a day without even thinking about it. We do not have Type 1. Our kids do. So Onboard is not us speaking for the community. It is a Type 1 family standing alongside it, making the thing we wished already existed: clothes a Type 1 reaches for because they are good, and because they are theirs. Not because they announce a diagnosis to a room. If you know, you know. If you do not, you just see something you like.
Here is what changes. Onboard has its own look, its own page, its own Instagram. Palmr gets to be all in on Florida. Onboard gets to be all in on Type 1. Neither one has to share a sentence with the other anymore, and both are better for it.
And here is what does not change. Splitting Onboard off does not mean Palmr is going to act like Type 1 does not exist. It is part of our family every single day, which makes it part of this company every single day. Onboard is still Palmr. Same family, same checkout, same standard we hold everything to, and the Palmr name on all of it.
That includes the giving back. We have always put part of what we make back into this community, and that is not going to change. It is not tied to one collection. It comes from the whole house, Palmr and Onboard both. Not because a purchase comes with a cause attached to it, but because two of our kids live this, because the people in it with them showed up for us, and we want to return the favor. We give back because we care. We do not lead with it. We just do it.
Onboard is a welcome, too. Come onboard. You are in the right room.
Glad you are here.
— Nick and Rebecca
