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 institution from a chamber with $500 and her newborn lad successful a bearer by her side. While she was pregnant, she began wiring stones by manus and realized the marketplace didn't connection overmuch betwixt luxury pieces and inexpensive costume jewelry.

"Extra chamber successful my house, connected a paper table. 500 bucks, baby. That's it," she told James Dumoulin, big of "The School of Hard Knocks" podcast. Scott officially launched Kendra Scott LLC successful 2002 contempt having nary retail background, extracurricular backing oregon store experience.

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Three months aft giving birth, she packed her samples successful a beverage box, strapped her babe lad into a bearer and visited boutiques crossed Austin, Texas. She told "The School of Hard Knocks" that helium joined each income telephone and became "my small income rep."

Orders came successful quickly, but she did not person capable materials to nutrient them. At the past store connected her way that day, Scott sold her archetypal samples and utilized the wealth to bargain supplies for the orders she had conscionable secured. She sold her car, took idiosyncratic loans and enactment up everything she owned arsenic collateral.

Scott told Dumoulin she had "a scary relationship" with indebtedness and risked being "B-R-O-K-E" if income slowed. Even so, she funneled each dollar backmost into production. "Failure wasn't an option. I had to succeed," she told Entrepreneur successful 2015.

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By 2008, Scott was partnering with large section stores and moving a increasing wholesale business. When the fiscal situation hit, wholesale concern stopped overnight and her slope called successful a enactment of recognition that would person emptied the company, according to Foundr magazine.

After respective rejections from lenders, she recovered assistance astatine a Texas slope wherever a pistillate slope president approved the indebtedness and "kept my concern alive," Scott wrote connected Thrive Global.

The setback pushed her toward nonstop retail. In 2010, contempt a antecedently failed chapeau business, Scott opened her archetypal jewelry store successful Austin. Customers handled jewelry alternatively of viewing it down glass, customized pieces from much than 50 styles and 30 chromatic colors, and picked up orders wrong minutes. "It was dissimilar immoderate jewelry buying acquisition that had ever existed. It was similar a nightclub," she told Foundr successful 2022.