Seeing Queen Latifah and Aubrey Plaza sporting their jewelry on screen were big moments for the three friends and founders behind Philadelphia-based Forge and Finish. While the jewelry brand, founded in 2014, has already gotten some major exposure, the company is now focused on rebuilding revenue following a 50% loss of business in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In order to do so in what they believe is a sustainable manner, the founders – Emily Kane, Desiree Casimiro and Carly Mayer – have been turning their attention from retail to wholesale in a bid to grow.
Forge and Finish’s Hollywood exposure has helped boost the brand’s marketing initiatives, but its business model switch up is what’s really driving change and which they believe will see it meet – and eventually exceed – pre-pandemic levels.
“The pandemic flatlined us,” said Kane, admitting it’s a slow process. “It's hard to make such a gigantic shift and just be right back where you were. We have goals and we know how to get to where we're going and we're climbing there.”
“We've always been like the tortoise and the hare – we're the tortoise, slow and steady,” Mayer added.
Their measured approach is in line with their brand’s ethos. Forge and Finish is part of what’s known as the slow fashion movement, eschewing more cost-effective materials and practices in favor of well-crafted goods made to last.
That was an approach that each of the founders had in common. Forge and Finish came about after the three friends decided to combine their metal and design skills. Casimiro and Mayer grew up together in South Jersey, attending the same school – Cherry Hill East – before Mayer transferred to Perkiomen School in Pennsburg. It was there that her passion for the arts was stoked and she chose to pursue her studies at Temple University’s Tyle School of Art. There, she met Kane. Though the two were in different majors, they formed a relationship. Casimiro also would go on to study at Temple, focusing on media and communications.
Kane, who ended up studying sculpture and painting, found her way into jewelry while working at Dandelion Jewelry, starting in high school. Dandelion has Pennsylvania locations in Ardmore, King of Prussia, Saucon Valley and Wyomissing, plus one in Princeton, New Jersey. She spent over a decade with the company, part of which Mayer also worked there. Together they created De Mi A Ti, an exclusive line for the brand.
Eventually they left Dandelion but continued to work on their jewelry designs through individual brands. During that period, they often found themselves working in Mayer’s studio in her Fishtown home, focusing on metalwork.
Instead of continuing separately, they decided to team up to create Forge and Finish. They moved the business to Kane’s studio in Kensington in the former Viking Mill space – now undergoing conversion – until recently.
That studio served as their production facility, from which they built the business. The focus at the start was on retail. Early on, they were stocked in a handful of boutiques and sold frequently at industry trade shows.
When the pandemic halted such events and altered retail, they knew they had to shift their model. That idea was already underway as they had been looking for a new studio space for some time.
“We had wanted to grow our wholesale business, but we were so retail focused for so long that we had a hard time applying ourselves to wholesale,” Kane said. “The pandemic really helped us shift and develop our web presence and our wholesale business.”
Prior to Covid-19, upwards of 90% of business was retail. Today, that figure is closer to 40%. The goal is to increase wholesale from its current 60% to about 70%, with the remaining 30% being direct to consumer.
Its primary wholesalers are boutiques. The brand is stocked in a number of local shops, including Lobo Mau, Ritual Shoppe, Occasionette, Weavers Way Mercantile, Vagabond, and Midnight Lunch, all in Philadelphia. It’s also available in two of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s gift shops.
Subscribe to the Morning Edition or Afternoon Edition for the business news you need to know
They want to continue focusing on boutiques rather than department stores.
“When you walk in, you just know that you're experiencing something special,” Kane said of independently owned shops.
While that is the goal, Casimiro said that getting in front of boutiques has its difficulties. “It’s a grind,” she said.
But the grind it starting to pay dividends. The business has grown from a handful of local shops to more than 22 throughout the country, including as far as California. Expanding outside the Mid-Atlantic was a goal, given that so much of business was concentrated in Greater Philadelphia for years.
In addition to expanding wholesale, they’re also upping in-person shopping at their new studio at 1639 N. Hancock St. They built out the roughly 800-square-foot space to be a showroom that also contains production.
The new space gives them greater opportunity to bring in customers and to do custom creations. Buyers for local stores can also shop directly.
Forge and Finish makes all manner of jewelry – pieces span from $22 to more than $400 – across a range of collections, but rings and earrings are their top category sellers.
Those were the types of pieces worn by Plaza and Latifah. Plaza sported the brand’s Daria ring in the 2020 film “Black Bear.” Already a best seller, sales took off even more after it came out.
“I think stores really wanted to have it in their shop because of the feature,” Mayer said.
Latifah wore one of the brand’s signature styles, a pair of bronze Python hoops, in Adam Sandler’s 2022 Netflix feature “Hustle.”
They landed the placement through a friend who does costume design for films and has been collecting their jewelry for years.
While more Hollywood moments may be on the horizon, for now, they’re honed in on lasting and sustainable growth.
