Attentive customer service is at the forefront of every company’s focus these days, but BaubleBar takes their customer service one step further to give their customers the perfect shopping experience.
CO-FOUNDERS
Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky are best friends and businesses partners, normally a risky move but the perfect balance for them. They met while at analyst job training for UBS where they found out they have same birthday, and have pretty much been best friends and shopping buddies ever since. And one other thing about starting a business with a coworker: they already knew how the other operated under stress.
BaubleBar’s Beginnings
While at Harvard business school (together of course), Jain and Yacobovsky felt that no jewelry company was meeting their needs, even though they were ideal customers. Being in business school, starting their own direct-to-consumer company came naturally, and they used their network around them at Harvard to prepare to launch BaubleBar.
Founded in 2011, @BaubleBar is an e-commerce based fast-fashion company offering trendy jewelry at attainable prices. Headquartered in the Flatiron district of New York City, the company recently opened up a 52,000 sqft warehouse in the fashion-focused Industry City, Brooklyn. This in-house production cycle allows the team of ~150 employees to see an idea on the runway and have a product available to sell in a short 6-8 weeks, revolutionary but necessary in the world of fast-fashion trend forecasting.
With BaubleBar’s total funding amounting to $35.6 million, many aspiring entrepreneurs want to know how they did it: both raising funding in venture capital meetings full of all male investors who didn’t understand their product as well as overall business success. Jain and Yacobovsky attribute their success to customer obsession. They still watch the runways, but focus more on digital tracking on both their own website and social media. By creating an internal tool to gather this information and study their customers, the company knows what their customers want months before the customers do. They essentially know them better than they know themselves.
BaubleBar’s Growth
The company also has a dedicated SWAT team – Service With Accessorizing Talent – to help every shopper find her perfect accent piece, truly going above and beyond the customer service experience. BaubleBar is also embracing influencer marketing with large amounts of User Generated Content and shoppable social media.
BaubleBar has over 1 million monthly visits to its website and produces 50-100 new jewelry designs weekly, with 2015 revenue estimated to be around $75 million. After establishing themselves digitally, Jain and Yacobovosky began selling in retail stores like Nordstrom and Bloomingdales, opened several brick-and-mortar retail locations, then came out with a new line called SugarFix by BaubleBar for a specific Target shopper demographic. With Yacobovsky tackling the brand voice and marketing and Jain at the helm of product, operations and supply chain, the two seem to be an unstoppable duo.
