Kendra Scott is sharing how her early love of fashion guided her toward building a billion dollar jewelry brand.
In a Sunday, July 27 Instagram post, Scott wrote that ever since she was a kid, “I was always enamored with fashion and design,” alongside a photo of herself dressed to the nines as a child.
As her passion for fashion remained, Scott said that she dropped out of college at the age of 19 to “purse my dream of being an entrepreneur in the fashion space.”
And it was her stepfather’s cancer diagnosis that inspired her to build her first company “The Hat Box.”
“I wanted to create comfortable and stylish headwear for people experiencing hair loss due to chemotherapy,” Scott explained. But after five years, “it failed. Big time!”
Although Scott admitted defeat and “almost gave up,” she noticed one part of “The Hat Box” that was successful, the jewelry she was making and selling at the register.
“The jewelry I was making and selling at the register would sell out the same day,” Scott revealed. “Game time!”
It was 2002 and Scott was pregnant with her first child, a son, Cade, when she used her last $500 to design her first collection in her spare bedroom.
“My first big break came when Nordstrom purchased a large order,” Scott shared. “But I was living off of credit card debt and putting every single item I owned up for collateral.”
Scott knew she needed an investor, “bad.”
“If you build it, they will come,” Scott wrote, quoting the popular 1989 film Field of Dreams. And “after 10 years, a mentor of mine offered to invest.”
And the rest as they say is history.
“From there, Kendra Scott grew fast,” Scott wrote, adding that despite their mega success her team “never lost sight of what mattered; family, fashion and philanthropy.”
By 2016, 14 years after she designed her first line for Kendra Scott, “we were valued at over one billion dollars.” And now Kendra Scott has “over 150 retail stores” and has “given back over $70 million to women and youth causes.”
Even with all that success, Scott, now a mother of three, says she and her team “are just getting started.”
Scott made it clear that her success “wasn’t luck. This was sheer determination, grit, and a passion for doing good.”
“Let this be proof,” Scott said of her story. “Your greatest failures can catapult you into your greatest successes.”
“I bootstraped this baby all the way,” Scott said at the time. “My father always said, ‘Honey, don’t be intimidated by the men in suits.’ I’ve walked into so many rooms, and nobody in that room looks like me.”
“And I had to have that confidence within myself to know I know what I’m talking about. I know that I can do this and I’m not going to let anybody scare me today. You got to walk in there and be like, watch out here I come.”
Most recently, the Texas native brought back her Everlyne bracelet to raise money for those affected by the floods in central Texas and her Kendra Scott Foundation accepted essential donations for those who have been displaced.
She and country music star Zac Brown have also shared news of their engagement earlier in July.
Today, Scott remains “one of only 20 female founders in the United States that have founded a billion dollar brand,” she shared in August 2024.
