When Kendra Scott launched her jewelry business in 2002, she had no investors, no retail experience, and just $500 to her name. What she did have was a spare bedroom in her Austin, Texas home, a newborn baby, and the kind of determination that turns impossible odds into billion-dollar success stories.
“I built it out of my bedroom,” Scott said in a recent interview with The School of Hard Knocks, which has 5.6 million followers on TikTok. “Extra bedroom in my house, on a card table. 500 bucks, baby. That’s it.”
Scott designed her first jewelry collection while pregnant with her first son, hand-wiring each piece with semi-precious stones. For years, she made jewelry as gifts for her friends, but in the retail space, she’d always felt like there was expensive, or low-quality, but nothing in between. So she set out to make high-quality jewelry at accessible price points.
Just three months after giving birth, she put her first samples in a tea box, strapped her infant son into a baby carrier, and walked store to store through Austin, writing down orders from local boutiques.
“He was actually sitting on my lap and went to my first sales calls, going store to store with me. He was my little sales rep,” Scott said. “Babies do sell product, you know, babies and puppies. Bring them on your sales call. It works.”
