Matt and Jacey Sumner, founders of Hexlets, are creating a new way for kids and adults to share their lives with others through jewelry. StartCharlotte readers can preview the products and website (www.hexlets.com) before going live – enter the password ‘GetHexed’.
The name Hexlets stems from the product itself as it is jewelry with a hexagonal setting. The original idea and staple product is a charm bracelet with interchangeable magnetic, hexagonal images or charms – hexagon plus bracelet equals ‘Hexlet’. Matt Sumner, the founder of Hexlets, considers these charms ‘Hexes’.
The name ‘Hexlet’ also applies to their other products – pendant necklaces and rings. “Really, anything you can affix a Hex to, we consider a Hexlet.”
Matt Sumner and his wife Jacey Sumner are launching Hexlets towards the beginning of May – starting with a Kickstarter campaign to go-live in the next few weeks.
To ideate Hexlets, he admits there wasn’t an ‘a-ha’ moment. He ties the idea to buying jewelry for his wife.
“I was buying a ton of those Pandora charms for my wife. And ultimately she ended up not even liking them.”
He ended up spending a few hundred dollars for five charms and the bracelet. “[The charms] are like $50 a pop!”
“I started seeing some kids wearing them – that’s great. But for the price of one charm, you need to be able to have a whole bracelet that’s something customizable – that you like. That’s the whole purpose of charms.”
His idea was to create affordable, charm jewelry that customers could put custom photos on moveable and changeable links. “A few merchants sell charm bracelets on Etsy, but the charms themselves are not interchangeable.”
He hired legal help for a patent search and opinion. “In the end, the lawyers couldn’t find anyone else doing this – taking an image, applying it to something that is an attachment that then applies to a base.” So he patented it.
The Sumners are intentionally slow-rolling this product to market as they want to ensure the backend processing is perfected.
On the soon-to-launch website, customers can upload and crop a picture from a phone. The Sumners then have the process set up to where that image is processed, printed, attached to a magnetic Hex with an epoxy resin, and shipped within a few hours. “Everything’s done here stateside.”
If you upload an image before 2 pm, it will be produced and shipped by 5 pm that same day.
“You can put anything on there you want – literally anything you can take on you iPhone and upload to my website you can put it on there.” So photos of friends, family, volleyball teammates, maritime flags – really, anything – can be put on a Hex. Even local art can be housed on a Hex.
Locally, outside of getting exposure – and guidance – through PitchBreakfast and Charlotte Angel Fund events, the Sumner’s have leveraged the local art community – especially in the NoDa area – to help generate designs.
The standard bracelet houses ten. “I wanted to get a bracelet complete with all the Hexes you need for about $25 – that was my goal.”
A kid’s bracelet could be personalized with pictures of friends as well as her favorite characters from shows or movies. He has signed on a royalty partner that owns a number of licenses – My Little Ponies, Shopkins, Despicable Me, and more, and he is working to sign more.
The Sumner’s recognize that the customer base for jewelry is mostly female. But this isn’t only about jewelry with art or sentimental pictures – they have also developed a highly customized game similar to the Pokemon card game.
You can either play on a bracelet by interchanging the Hexes or on one of Hexlets’s battle discs – a small circular board game.
As a couple, they have built two previous companies.
From Matt’s perspective, “I’m the idea guy and the guy who can put it all together… [But] the ironic thing is my wife is the exact opposite”
So Matt does all the frontend work to initially connect all the pieces, and then hands the operations over to Jacey. “She runs them perfect.”
He has started these companies all from a part-time basis – he still has a corporate job.
“The last two [companies] we actually built and sold. The first one was a company called SlatePlate – it’s literally plates made out of rocks – black slate.”
“After that, we started a cheese company in Raleigh”. The Sumner’s eventually sold the business to the Charlotte-based Orrman’s Cheese Shop.
Matt’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is simple, “Be realistic about your product’s potential, your market and set equally realistic business goals.”
He also advises to understand your customers’ needs and to remain persistent. “If you’re not all-in on your company, can you really expect your customers to be?”
