545: In Retrospect - How Kendra Scott turned $500 Into a $1 BILLION Jewellery Empire

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kendra Scott started her self-titled billion-dollar jewelry business out of failure. Her first business failed after 5 years, and she started selling handmade jewelry door-to-door as a side hustle. Now, Kendra Scott Jewelry is a billion-dollar business with 100 retail locations across the US. But success didn't come quickly. Through personal struggles, recessions, and rejections, Scott built a fashion business driven by an unforgettable customer experience. Listen to Nathan and Kendra discuss: - What she learned from her failed business - Fundraising and dealing with rejection - The best piece of business advice she still follows - Shifting her business model from wholesale to retail - The nightclub atmosphere of Kendra Scott stores - How philanthropy creates customer loyalty - How to weather the storm as a founder - Her new entrepreneurial memoir Born to Shine And much more founder advice… Click here to start your business for $1. You’ll get all-access foundr+, where you’ll find more in-depth, proven strategies from founders like our guest today and support and advice from our global community of 30,000 founders. If you loved this conversation and learned something new, rate and review this episode. Stay in touch with us, follow foundr on your favorite platform: Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook X LinkedIn Magazine

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Founder Fam, today we're diving back into the archive to bring you our episode with Kendra Scott,
0:06.4	the self-made entrepreneur behind one of the most successful jewelry brands in the world.
0:11.9	I saw one of her stores when I just come back from LA actually.
0:14.9	So Kendra takes us through her journey from launching her first business, a hat company that ultimately ended up failing to
0:22.6	building an empire that has redefined affordable luxury. We dive into the highs and lows from
0:29.2	navigating recessions and rejection to securing her first retail store and using adversity to
0:35.2	fuel innovation. All right, let's dive in.
0:39.3	Hear the stories.
0:40.8	Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.
0:46.6	Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
0:52.6	How did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?
0:58.1	You know, it's been a journey that really started when I was a kid.
1:02.5	My Aunt Joanne was a fashion director at a department store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1:08.7	And I grew up in a little town, Kenosha, which is about 35 minutes away from
1:12.9	Milwaukee. And going to her apartment and being in her closet and seeing all of her slideshows from
1:19.9	her being in Milan and Paris and London and New York, places that has seen so far away as a little
1:26.8	girl from Wisconsin really just
1:29.7	brought me into this world of fashion that I felt like was magical. You could be anybody you
1:35.4	wanted to be. It really just transformed you, right? Fashion could, you could create whoever
1:40.2	you wanted to be in it. And I think I was just drawn to it from a very early age of that
1:46.0	magical sense of it. And here we are, right, starting my first company was a hat company
1:51.5	and really wanting to utilize that love, that passion for design, for fashion, and really
	...

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