Jewelry Mogul Kendra Scott Built A $1 Billion Brand From $500 And A Baby In A Carrier — 'Failure Wasn't An Option,' She Said
Kendra Scott built a billion-dollar jewelry company from a bedroom with $500 and her newborn son in a carrier by her side. While she was pregnant, she began wiring stones by hand and realized the market didn't offer much between luxury pieces and cheap costume jewelry.
"Extra bedroom in my house, on a card table. 500 bucks, baby. That's it," she toldJames Dumoulin, host of "The School of Hard Knocks" podcast. Scott officially launched Kendra Scott LLC in 2002 despite having no retail background, outside funding or store experience.
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Hand-Wired Jewelry And A Tea Box Of Samples
Three months after giving birth, she packed her samples in a tea box, strapped her infant son into a carrier and visited boutiques across Austin, Texas. She told "The School of Hard Knocks" that he joined every sales call and became "my little sales rep."
Orders came in quickly, but she did not have enough materials to produce them. At the last store on her route that day, Scott sold her original samples and used the money to buy supplies for the orders she had just secured. She sold her car, took personal loans and put up everything she owned as collateral.
Scott told Dumoulin she had "a scary relationship" with debt and risked being "B-R-O-K-E" if sales slowed. Even so, she funneled every dollar back into production. "Failure wasn't an option. I had to succeed," she told Entrepreneur in 2015.
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Crisis Nearly Closed The Doors
By 2008, Scott was partnering with major department stores and running a growing wholesale business. When the financial crisis hit, wholesale business stopped overnight and her bank called in a line of credit that would have emptied the company, according to Foundr magazine.
After several rejections from lenders, she found help at a Texas bank where a female bank president approved the loan and "kept my business alive," Scott wrote on Thrive Global.
The setback pushed her toward direct retail. In 2010, despite a previously failed hat business, Scott opened her first jewelry store in Austin. Customers handled jewelry instead of viewing it behind glass, customized pieces from more than 50 styles and 30 stone colors, and picked up orders within minutes. "It was unlike any jewelry shopping experience that had ever existed. It was like a nightclub," she told Foundr in 2022.
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