The Covid-19 pandemic was a surprising catalyst for Jane Win Jewelry.
The Wayne company, founded by a former Lilly Pulitzer marketing executive, grew by 145% during 2020 and followed that up with triple digit growth in 2021. With its customer base firmly established, the brand – which is also sold on Goop – is looking to continue growing at a 50% clip as it approaches its fifth anniversary.
The idea for Jane Win came following the 2016 election cycle. Traveling to Washington, D.C., with her daughters, stepdaughters, their mother and their stepmother, Jane Paradis felt called to action by the Women’s March they were attending. Already a senior vice president of marketing at Lilly Pulitzer, Paradis wanted to set another example for her daughters of what women can accomplish and so began dreaming up what would become Jane Win Jewelry.
After nearly a year of conceptualizing, the brand launched in December 2017 and has grown considerably since.
Known for its signature coin pendants, Jane Win launched with five designs. The signature coins are emblazoned on one side with a single word like “Love,” “Hope,” and “Strong” and on the other with a corresponding design. The initial coins were made on Jewelers' Row in Philadelphia but production has since relocated. Some of it remains in the U.S., while others are made abroad. The coin collection has also expanded to seven and Paradis expects it to grow again, including a special release to mark the brand’s fifth anniversary next month.
Those original coins were the driver for related collections and today the brand stocks over 100 styles, many changing regularly, including pendants, earrings, rings and bracelets. The items are what Paradis refers to as semi-fine, meaning they’re a mid-range price point and a number are plated in gold or sterling silver. The larger coins retail for $278 each.
They also come in a smaller version selling around $200 each. The larger coins are a key driver, accounting for about 60% of sales.
“It's how everybody enters the brand. And then it's your first gift,” she said.
Paradis said she was drawn to jewelry in part because of her own passion for it and the way “jewelry has the ability to kind of capture moments and really bring out a lot of emotion,” she said.
She also liked the business model. As a commodity, jewelry has a built-in margin – but even that is decreasing. A report from the Retail Owners Institute found that in 2021, gross margin percent for jewelry stores was 39.7%, a nearly 3% decrease from the 42.6% it was in 2017. Still, those margins would give her a shot at launching a business.
That was important given her first foray into business many years prior.
While living in New York in the first phase of her career, Paradis launched luxury bag brand Buzz by Jane Fox. Building on her experience in the fashion and high-end goods industry – prior to Lilly Pulitzer she worked at Barneys New York and Calvin Klein Cosmetics – the bags landed on the pages of magazines, garnering ample attention. While Paradis knew the industry, at the time she didn’t yet have a firm grasp on the business.
That changed when she got a call from King of Prussia-based Lilly Pulitzer, which tapped her to lead the colorful apparel brand’s foray into accessories. During her time there, she took on a number of roles, working in prints and design and eventually marketing and digital marketing. It was a master class in business operations and so when she was inspired by the Women’s March, Paradis felt equipped to build out her next business.
“I really feel like that was my school,” she said.
Unlike Buzz by Jane Fox, Jane Win launched with a direct-to-consumer focus. Today such sales account for 90% of business, with the remaining 10% coming from wholesale. Wholesale accounts range from small boutiques – like Skirt in Bryn Mawr, Peter Kate in Wilmington, and Elegance by Edythe in Northeast Philadelphia – as well as larger retailers like Goop.
“We're doing business in the millions and millions of dollars,” Paradis said.
Jane Win got the nod from Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand about a year into business and has maintained a consistent relationship since, selling a range of products and even making some exclusives.
That hasn’t been the brand’s only big-name partnership. Jane Win was sold on Anthropologie’s website for Mother’s Day 2021.
While partnerships like that can be a boost, Paradis likes the control a direct-to-consumer approach gives her. Still, she’s hoping to up wholesale volume to about 20% of business, something she expects could happen in 2023. Direct to consumer will remain her core business strategy and the brand is focused on customer retention and acquisition, the latter for which social media plays a crucial role.
It was an important tool in the early days of Covid-19, allowing Paradis to directly reach and grow her consumer base.
“During the pandemic, our business doubled. And it was because we were primed for direct to consumer,” she said, adding that it was “a huge fast forward.”
As the brand grows, Paradis is looking at potential partners to help it expand but doesn’t yet know what that might look like. If and when that does happen, she’s adamant that it be with someone who “sees the world through the same lenses that we do.”
She also has her eye on a potential future storefront. Jane Win presently has an office and showroom at 201 N. Aberdeen Ave. in Wayne that’s by appointment only, but anticipates they’ll outgrow the space in time.
Who is your target consumer?
She’s 40 to 50 … [and has] such strong female relationships that then goes young. So I have an 18-year-old girl, a 21-year-old girl, a 22-year-old girl and a 25-year-old girl like. Those women in that 40 to 50 have the same and they are gifting her and they're so proud that she's wearing the same coin. And then it's the same up to their moms. She's really kind of the linchpin there in the middle.
What are your goals going forward?
We want to continue to grow and we want to do it in a profitable way. We really have fun from a marketing perspective, bringing new customers into the brand. But a key metric for us is retention. Once we spend the time and energy bringing them in, we want them to become as obsessed with jewelry as I am. I would say in a nutshell, it's going to be a rockier road. I think people will be a little more thoughtful with how they spend their money. I think the ultimate goal is growth, is profitability, and a high retention rate of customers.
