Advice from Melissa Joy Manning, Jewelry Designer/Entrepreneur

Designer Melissa Joy Manning’s jewelry can be found in more than 200 stores in the United States, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. Her pieces have been featured in numerous television programs, feature films, and fashion magazines. Melissa’s celebrity clients include Sheryl Crow, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Sandra Bullock, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Jewel, and Pink.

I’ve made jewelry since I was in Montessori school, but it was never like I wanted to be a jewelry designer. I mean, I used to lay on the floor of my house as a kid with my friends and we used to draw fashion magazines, and I always had this idea that in one way or another I would be in one, or something I made would be. I made friendship bracelets and put material on the sides of my jeans. My mother always said I could be whatever I wanted to be, but my dad always was like, “You can’t ever make a living in art, you need to fall back on something,” so I never thought of being a jewelry designer. In fact, it was one of those things I never really knew ever existed.

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When I left college, I was working in restaurants and high-end retail. I had no career aspirations, didn’t really know what I was going to do with myself, and my mom sent me to a vocational counselor. And all the tests came out that I should be self-employed.

I’m not difficult, but I have a definite idea of how things should be done. And I’m one of those people that if someone shows me how to do something, I immediately devise my own way to do it so that I can get it done faster for me personally, which causes problems in an office environment because then other people are like, “You’re working too fast,” or, “I don’t like your initiative.” At 24, no one wants to deal with someone like that. They want you to do what you’re told and punch the clock and leave and come in, and that’s not a work ethic I have. So the vocational counselor asked me what I could do, and I said I could make jewelry, and they were like, well, there you go.

I had no startup money. I think I was on unemployment at the time because I had gotten fired again, which was a bonus because then I had some kind of fallback—about $300 a month—and I was 25 at the time with four roommates, so it was ok. We were living in a flat in San Francisco before the tech boom so everything around was cheap, and I was working out of someone’s garage so I had no overhead.

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I started the business on a consignment basis with one store in San Francisco. I realized I needed more experience, so I went back to work for a jewelry company as a sales and marketing manager and did some of the trade-show setup and mailers and other sales, and again got fired. Again it was office politics. It was 14 girls in one office, and I was brought in as a manager at 25 and traveled all over and was never in the office and just didn’t foster a relationship with anyone. So I got fired again. I remember one day I was crying, “What am I ever going to do?” literally crying in front of the television. Then the show Just Shoot Me! came on, and this girl walks across the screen and she’s wearing my necklace. I called the show, they were like, “Yeah, she got it in San Francisco when she was on vacation, she insisted on wearing it because she loved it so much, it was her good-luck piece.” I was like, “All right, that’s a sign.” So that’s when I went into it full-force and realized that this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m not ever going to look back.

About a year later I did look back; things weren’t going that well. I think I had done like $15,000 in sales, I was only working with a couple of stores, I was doing street fairs, and I had no money in the bank. Again, feeling sorry for myself and literally in tears, I turned on the television and the same exact rerun of Just Shoot Me! is on. And I was like wow, ok, a believer.

That was six years ago. I now have eight or nine employees and we’re doing quite well. So I do have a dream job, but I have to say it that it hasn’t always been a dream. I’ve gotten to an amazing point where I am lucky enough to love what I do, and I’ve loved every single minute of it, but it’s definitely been a struggle. It’s been something where I’ve been hard to be around; it’s been my marriage of sorts for the last six years. I have created a dream career, but it’s definitely not like somebody gave me a bunch of money, I showed [my jewelry] at a market, and suddenly everyone wanted my products.

It took at least two years to get past the street-fair stage. I had no startup money, so what I was doing was really just investing [any money I made] back into the business. I had devised my strategy with an aggressive trade-out policy so if a store tried my product [and] it didn’t sell for them, I said I would trade it out at full value against their next order, so that they would be guaranteed that they would order again and I would continue the client relationship. But I then would take all this stock back, so I would have to liquidate it, and that’s why I was doing street fairs. So I did those for the first couple years, and then broke up with a boyfriend and was like, “Eh, I’m not depending on anyone else but myself; I really need to do this.” I started researching, and I had enough in the bank at that point to test-market three trade shows, so I test-marketed the gift, the craft, and the fashion shows.

For any product there’s different markets for your channels of distribution. So for me, as a jeweler, I can choose to sell at a craft level—gallery or museum gift shops; gift level, at stores that sell random gifts; or the fashion market, where I am now, which is both high-end boutiques and department stores. I started doing both gift and fashion for a while, dropped gift after a year, and then went straight into fashion, and that’s where we do the entirety of our business. We’re in over 200 stores. I think for a jewelry designer, especially now, it’s not necessarily about being the best designer—you have to be an entrepreneur, you have to know the market, you have to be able to find a niche, and you have to be able to target your customers. I did a business program called the Renaissance Center. I don’t think it’s available everywhere, but they have sister organizations, and it’s a business center where you have to a have a viable business idea to be accepted, and then they help you devise a business plan and kind of tell you how to do a business.

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So besides developing your product, I would say it’s equally important to develop a business philosophy, one that will drive you, and a vision that can drive you through different stages of your development so that you have an idea of where you want to be, whether it’s dollar amounts, stores you want to be in, employees, any of those kind of things because those—those are what drive me. I always set new visions and new goals every quarter, and then we issue those and move forward, so it becomes less about this grand idea of “I want to be a jewelry designer,” but you can break it down into easier goals of achieving different levels within being a jewelry designer.

But my main piece of advice is to never give up. I mean, I used to leave New York in tears because Barneys would never look at me—and now they’re one of my best clients and have been for three years. So I would take every no not as a no but as an inquiry to further your product to make it better. If you’re doing something truly innovative, you might not be picked up right away, but the market will come back around and you’ll be recognized as such. So it might take a while, but you’ll create longevity in the business, which is much better than being trend driven.

If you put your heart and soul into something and that’s what you want to be, you will eventually be successful, even if it’s not your original idea of what success is. It just takes a while for everything to come together.