Creating a Jewelry Brand That Embodies Artistry, Ethics and Environmental Sustainability

Michael Mendenhall: Welcome to PeopleForce Podcast by TriNet. I'm Michael Mendenhall. TriNet is a full-service HR solutions company committed to empowering small and medium-size businesses. We work with amazing small and medium-size businesses and I'm excited to bring their voices to life. Here you can catch new episodes of PeopleForce Podcast every month on Apple, Spotify, YouTube and TriNet.com/rise.

Today we have a very special guest joining us, Pamela Cloud, the visionary founder of Roseate Jewelry. Pamela brings a wealth of experience from her impressive 25-year career at Tiffany and Co, where she eventually rose to the position of senior vice president and chief merchandising officer. After her tenure at Tiffany, she founded Roseate Jewelry, a brand dedicated to transparency, traceability in the jewelry industry. Roseate Jewelry is renowned for its exquisite designs, featuring sustainably sourced pearls and ethically sourced lab-grown diamonds, setting a new standard in sustainable jewelry.

In this episode, we're gonna explore her journey from a leading role at one of the world's most iconic jewelry brands to pioneering her own venture. We'll delve into her creative process, the challenges she's overcome and her vision for the future of Roseate Jewelry. Welcome Pam to PeopleForce.

Pamela Cloud: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Michael: Yeah, it's great to have you. You're a local, which is awesome.

Pamela: I am a local.

Michael: Easy to get here.

Pamela: Downtown.

Michael: And it's Halloween.

Pamela: It is Halloween. Happy Halloween. I'm not in costume.

Michael: You're not. Okay. Well, I'm gonna ask you one thing. What was, if I said to you, your most favorite costume in your world?

Pamela: Oh, that's a good one.

Michael: Yeah. That you ever dressed in?

Pamela: Probably in college. I'm dating myself, but my girlfriend, my roommates and I went as the rock and flowers back in the, that little flower in the eighties.

Michael: Oh, wow. We're going back to like the seventies.

Pamela: The eighties. Yeah.

Michael: The eighties?

Pamela: Yeah, I'm dating myself, but it was fun. It was a fun night. And how about you?

Michael: And do you have pictures?

Pamela: Yeah, a few. Yeah.

Michael: Oh gosh. We'll have to see that.

Pamela: Old school pictures.

Michael: Well, mine was, you know, I worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, the first film, and so I went as one of the pirates.

Pamela: Oh, nice.

Michael: And I was showing pictures the other day and everyone's like, “That's you?” I go, “Yeah, no, that's me.” And then someone goes, “That looks like Milli Vanilli.” I go, “Hello. I have dreadlocks.” It's just, you know.

Pamela: Very cool.

Michael: Yeah, it was very cool. But you've had a great career and I wanna go back and we'll go way back to where you grew up. So we'd love to know like where you grew up, what your intent was as you’re in high school. We all had dreams and aspirations at that point. And then you're guided by people, mentors, your family, like, “Oh no, we want you to do this” because everyone's sort of trying to look out for your economic wellbeing, and you have a passion or you had a passion for something. Talk to us about that.

Pamela: So, back to the beginning. Let's see. So I'm originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I am a product of the 1970s culture in Pittsburgh, I would say. So, ghost dealers, but…

Michael: Yeah, you love the Three Rivers and what is it, the Mount Washington.

Pamela: Oh, yeah. It's a beautiful place in the world. Yeah. My grandfather actually grew up on Mount Washington.

Michael: It’s stunning. Yeah, they had some great restaurants up there, by the way.

Pamela: They did. And they do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like if you built a train city, you would build Pittsburgh with the Point and the bridges and, yeah. Anyway, we moved around then sort of when I was in middle school, we did a quick stint in Dallas, Texas. We moved to Tampa, Florida, and I went to high school in one of our favorite shared cities, Orlando.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Pamela: So I went to high school in Orlando. So I don't really consider…

Michael: Is that where you graduated?

Pamela: I did, yeah. I consider New York home, though. I've been here for 30-plus years, so…

Michael: And what led you here? Was it school?

Pamela: Yeah, so I left, when I went to college, I went to Georgetown in DC. I knew I wanted to go to a city.

Michael: Were you doing political science?

Pamela: I was a government major at Georgetown along with everyone else there, but I always worked retail. So I think I told you, I did a, a very quick stint actually at Disney when I was in high school. I worked at Ann Taylor in college. So I always had retail jobs. I did, I think one LSAT class, not even the whole class. I just went to one class and I thought, “Oh, that's not for me.” So after college, I took a job in New York with the Bloomingdale's training program.

Michael: Now, where were your parents in all this? Like encouraging you to do that or like, “Hey, I have a passion for retail, I want to do something in retail,” or were they like, “No, no, go get your law degree from Georgetown”?

Pamela: No, my parents were very supportive through the whole thing. They, I always from a little girl wanted to live in a big city. I just knew that, yeah, we used to come to New York when I was 5, 6, 7 years old. My grandparents lived here and I just always wanted to live in one of those windows. I would think of it that way. I just wanted to live in a building. And my dad actually said, why don't you move to New York City after college? And I'd always wanted to go to Georgetown and I loved Washington DC, still do. So he was super supportive, as was my mom. And they were like, go, go, go explore.

Michael: Now, did you land at Bloomingdale's as that training?

Pamela: Yeah. As most people landed maybe today, but even back then through the federated training program. So I was at Bloomingdale's. But you could have gone through Macy's or Saks or…

Michael: Now that was before your, the business school at NYU, is that right?

Pamela: Yes. I went back to business school much later. So I was at Bloomingdale's for a couple of years. I really, I feel like those are such good training grounds for folks interested in brand management or merchandising or buying, you know, you just, you know, they work you like crazy, but you really learn how to build assortments and think about design and think about sell through and manage vendors and all those just foundational things that then really solidified, okay, I want to build a career with brands and in retail and with product and design. So I left Bloomingdale's after a few years and jumped over to Tiffany. And Tiffany was just the brand that I'd always wanted to work for.

Michael: Now what did you do first at Tiffany?

Pamela: Oh, yes. I was like the assistant to the assistant to the assistant watch buyer. It was back in the early nineties too.

Michael: So you’re basically running watches around.

Pamela: I ran watches around. Yes, I did. I ran them from the upper floors to the lower floors to whoever needed them. And eventually I was the watch buyer at Tiffany's for many years.

Michael: Now what does that mean? I mean, do you, do you go to Switzerland and…

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And Italy or places where they're actually making the watches?

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And were they branded watches?

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: Co-branded watches?

Pamela: So back then it was quite different. Tiffany still carried branded watches. So my first job was actually managing and then helping to close down the Rolex Tiffany relationship, which was a very tricky role to be in because the stores did not want to give back the Rolex watches and the relationship was ending. But Tiffany back then sold multi-brands in their watch category along with their own. That sort of ended in the mid to late nineties when the watch industry consolidated under the big European brands and houses. And Tiffany really pursued its own brand. But back then it was more like buying for multi-brand watches.

Michael: Now, when you do that, you know, you always find it in supply chains that even in luxury supply chains, that you know, the same people are going to the same producers and they just brand it differently. And they may have a little different design, but it's the same watch manufacturer. Is it the same with watches?

Pamela: I would say not those brands.

Michael: Okay.

Pamela: So those, those brands that Tiffany carried were the some of the best in the world. So they were Rolex and Patek Philippe, and I think still Vacheron and Brigade were carried by Tiffany back then. So it was a kind of a much different, we did go to Switzerland, we went to the Basel Fair that existed back then every year.

Michael: But how do you find then the actual manufacturer? I mean, I guess Rolex has their own manufacturing plant.

Pamela: Yep.

Michael: But there's others that probably produce for multiple brands.

Pamela: Oh, sure. And then when we worked on the Tiffany brand. Tiffany had a watch center in Switzerland, and then we would man manage the componentry across all of those manufacturers in Switzerland.

Michael: So, then you were doing design at all?

Pamela: So then after I was the watch buyer for a few years, then my next role was actually demand management, which is all the buying and forecasting and inventory management for the company. So I had a lot of supply chain experience and that was for the full Tiffany brand. And when you're working…

Michael: Is that a lot about data, I mean, at that point?

Pamela: It's data, but in luxury and high-end retail, it's a blend of the art and the science, right? The data can only tell you so much. But if, you know, you hit that point where the magic takes off and someone is wearing it and it becomes a must-have item. And you know, today you would call it influencer marketing. Back then we called it supermodel marketing. But it was really that crossroad that you can't predict.

Michael: Right.

Pamela: You know, when you're at a brand like that, you don't…

Michael: Has that changed today though? When you're saying influencers so much is done online. I mean, it's really interesting. 30% of all diamonds now are purchased online.

Pamela: Yeah. Amazing, right?

Michael: So people aren't going into a store. They're researching it and then okay. They're okay with that.

Pamela: Yeah. My experience would tell me that there's still a lot of research done in store. And so even when the purchase happens online, people go in, they view, they learn, they educate themselves, and then they buy online. And I think companies like Brilliant Earth and others have done a really good job of both educating and marketing to consumers that you can in fact buy online. That they make beautiful product, and that they have very generous ways of returning that product. So,

Michael: So you're at Tiffany's. Yeah. Now you've become…

Pamela: So then my career,

Michael: I mean, a big, big job.

Pamela: Yeah. You know, I think I was very lucky to be at Tiffany at a point at which Tiffany was growing very fast. And so we went from an organization of, I think sort of a historically very typical organization in retail of buying and design and retail to merchandising, marketing really global specialties. And we were growing so fast that I was able to step into many roles in merchandising and really learn the totality of it. So I had all of demand management, but then I had category management, which was then the assortment and the pricing, and then working directly with design on creating all of the collections. So we created wonderful things like the Tiffany Tea collection, Tiffany Keys, so many famous collections that I'm really proud of. 'cause they're real icons in jewelry today. And then eventually I oversaw all the categories, so including high jewelry and engagement jewelry, and then the non-jewelry categories, which are fun categories for Tiffany.

Michael: So let's explain to people who are listening.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: People hear high jewelry. What's high jewelry?

Pamela: Oh, high jewelry is jewelry typically over, it's the, it's the top of the pyramid. It's jewelry over a hundred thousand dollars, and you just tens of millions of dollars. It's the dream.

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: So when Audrey Hepburn thinks of walks into Tiffany, and she's dreaming about it in the windows, think of high jewelry as the dream. It's Schlumberger. It's the world's most beautiful diamonds.

Michael: And what percent of the company's revenue comes from high jewelry versus, that's the aspiration…

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: …and you use that as the aspiration. That's 2%. But it drives more volume.

Pamela: Think about it as the driver and the aspiration. You know, Tiffany, when it's now owned by LVMH, but was a, I think near $5 billion business. So they had these major billion dollar pillars, but it was a super fun brand to help manage. It's one, it is a brand that I wanted to be a part of, even as a little girl or a teenager reading the old selections catalogs. And dreaming about just, it was New York to me. It was the most beautiful jewelry and you could have a little piece of it. Right? That's what makes Tiffany so special.

Michael: Well, you wanted that little blue box.

Pamela: You wanted that box. Audrey, if you remember once the phone dialer

Michael: Yes.

Pamela: In the movie.

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: But, you know, you can buy an open heart from Elsa Perretti for a couple hundred dollars or you can dream about the million-dollar necklace. And I think that's what makes that brand very unique.

Michael: So you were in this super executive sort of position at Tiffany's. LVMH buys them. You had a very good relationship with the CEO, Mike Kowalski.

Pamela: Yes.

Michael: …who was the CEO for a period of time as well. You both exit, right? And now you're, you're at, you know, a little shared workspace.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: Deciding on what's next,

Pamela: What's next.

Michael: So tell us about what was next in that conversation. Was Mike there with you?

Pamela: Mike's always, I mean, Mike's been a real friend. I don't think he, if he listens to this, I think he loves the word mentor. But really he's been a guiding force in my life. And really someone who taught me how to do business in the best way possible. Right? Like, if you are in the jewelry business and you are in the business of mining these beautiful gemstones and materials for people to wear, you're going to have a footprint. There's no way around that. But how do you do it in the most responsible, most ethical way possible? And Mike always thought about things from that way. He would also say, if you have to make a decision and you wouldn't want it on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, then make a better decision. And so those guiding principles really are in the back of my mind, not just in business, but…

Michael: So you're sitting there saying, well…

Pamela: What do I do next?

Michael: What do you do next?

Pamela: Yes.

Michael: And you've moved into a field that has becoming ever more relevant.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: When we think about the earth, when we think about sustainability, when we think about ethically sourced materials. You've now come into a space where it's crowded. These are, you know, the diamond business, I think alone just in the U.S. is $50 billion.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: You know, you're looking at the pearl business, which has become very hot, where there's, you know, two to 300% increases in inflation on it because of Covid, because farms shut down. And you're saying there's gonna be a market for this.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And when you go down to the Gen Ys, the Gen Xs, the millennials right now are very focused on it. But as you go further down into the younger generations…

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: They're all about this. So you say, I have this idea.

Pamela: So yeah, I, you know, when I left, I thought right away, I'll go back and get another course. That's what I do. I'll go back, go back and get another corporate job. I went on a few interviews at that point, I, you know, my kids who are now in college were in high school. I think you've met my rescue dog. Yes. Yes. And suddenly I thought, well, maybe there's white space in jewelry. You know, I've spent so much of my career thinking about this nexus point between design and commercial success. Like, I love those when those two come together. And you can create a large business that's very well designed like that. That's where my passion lies on the business side.

And so I thought a lot about the white space and pearls in particular. I'd always had this idea that it was an underdeveloped material in jewelry. There are beautiful pearl brands out there, Mikimoto being the one that you hear most about. But in terms of, yes, jewelry's crowded, but the brands that combine pearls and design, you can't name too many of them. And so, pearls also, and we're talking about pearls that are farmed very responsibly. So there's a hierarchy of pearls, meaning saltwater pearls and freshwater pearls. And we intend to…

Michael: Now those are all cultured?

Pamela: They're all cultured. The pearl industry is cultured today. So natural pearls. Natural pearls really, I don't wanna say ceased to exist 'cause you can still find some natural pearls out there. But 95-plus-percent of the world's pearl supply is in fact cultured. But they are farmed in the most beautiful places in the world. So Western Australia. The most beautiful islands in Tahiti. The golden pearls come from the Philippines, Southern Japan. So these farmers, by definition, do things in responsible ways because healthy oceans and healthy waters produce beautiful pearls. And so it's funny to talk to them about doing things sustainably because they have to. And they've always done business that way.

And so, Mike and I were talking about pearls, and this was a lunch, sort of mid-COVID and you know, was there still an opportunity to think about these materials, but buying the materials directly from the pearl farms, going to visit them, going to know the farmers, the places, communicating that part of the story. And then with the most beautiful design and really bringing those two things together. And that's Roseate. And so in 2022, we decided…

Michael: So pearls, you're like, we’re doing the pearls.

Pamela: We're doing the pearls.

Michael: Pearls that then all of a sudden became incredibly popular for both men and women. You know, a lot of male celebrities and sports figures started wearing pearls.

Pamela: Yep.

Michael: And so now men are wearing pearls. So that's, that sort of expands your audience, I would guess.

Pamela: So we caught a lucky break. So when we were first talking about this, one of our taglines was that sort of free your pearls from their, from the jewelry box. Right? Pearls don't have to just be what your, that, that the thing that was handed down to you from your grandmother, but you didn't know quite how to style it. So we were thinking about it from that way. Very modern pearls. But then, yes. You know, Harry Styles and Pharrell and some athletes did us a huge favor.

Michael: Yes.

Pamela: And the good news is that it continues. I think they just brought the material back into focus now. It's very genderless.

Michael: And there's some things you are doing, 'cause I, I do want to get into, okay, you have this idea and I want to come back to the pearl piece, but I want to get into, okay, now you have this idea of pearls are gonna be a big part of what you're gonna do. They actually clean the water. You know, you have the billion, I think they're trying to create a billion around New York City to try to really clean the water up. So there's sort of a very good benefit to it. Then you, you said, but maybe we should think about metals and what do we do with metals? Talk about that 'cause I think that's interesting. When you never think about recycling metals.

Pamala: Yeah. Well, one of the things that, well, many of the things, but you know, we are pearl-focused and that is what our primary focus is on. But then we're a jewelry company, so we have to think of all of the other materials that go into it. And jewelry supply chains are hard to, the way that much of the material is accumulated and passed through refineries and stone cutting facilities. It's hard to track. And so one of the ideas in a startup that Mike and I talked about was that if you are not just Tiffany, but if you're a two, five, $10 billion company, it's very, very hard to re-engineer a supply chain. Right? That you just, you can make progress. But that is one thing that you have to think about. But when you're building a brand, you can build it in a different way. And so how would we build it if we started from scratch, which is what we were doing.

So on the metal side, we started with recycled materials, which is great because they're recycled. They can be certified. There are very responsible refiners that do trace the material. But ultimately you don't know where it came from originally or what really recycled means. And I look forward to when there's more regulation about that 'cause that helps consumers understand what these terms mean. But we did find about a year ago, a company out of the UK called Bluebirds Metals. It's run by two brothers, but Charlie Bets, it's called Bets Metals. And they have a gold process called single mine of origin gold. They'll allow our manufacturers to buy the gold directly from them and they actually provide a QR code that traces the gold back to the mine that they purchased from. So those mines are in Africa, in Peru, maybe they're looking in Canada, but they are really at the forefront of this idea that you don't have to accept that you can't know these things, that in our future we will be able to know these things. And so we were the first in the U.S. to launch with single mine of origin gold. And that just happened a few months ago.

Michael: Oh, awesome.

Pamela: Sorry, that was a long-winded story.

Michael: No, no, no. But no. But that's terrific. And then, I love the fact, and people understand this, you added diamonds to this.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: These are lab grown. What people can't get past is it has all the same qualities and chemical makeup of a real diamond.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And some of them have some of those imperfections as well that you would find in, you know, the blood diamond trade.

Pamela: I love that you're so well researched in all these materials.

Yes. So when we thought about then how do you accent pearls, and of course I'm a Tiffany girl, so I love diamonds. And we really thought about mine diamonds versus lab-grown diamonds. Those are two markets now. The diamond industry is spending a lot of time fighting and arguing about which one is more ethical, which one will succeed, which one will fail. We're not about that. We're about full traceability and beautiful materials. And so as a small startup, we could trace our diamonds back to the labs that they were grown in. And that's important. That is a guiding principle for us. So we began working with Light Box, which is a diamond grower out in Oregon. Like the pearls. We can go see them, we can see how they're grown.

Michael: How long does it take?

Pamela: It takes a couple of weeks. It's really fascinating. You, you should do it.

Michael: I wanna take that trip with you.

Pamela: You should do a podcast with some lab growers, because I I sort of describe it as when in Antman, when they like create the goat in the box. Like that's how I describe it. But yes, it takes a couple of weeks. They start with a tiny carbon seed. You put it in the reactor and the reactor grows the rough in a matter of weeks. The rough comes out just as rough would be mined from the earth.

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: And then it is marked and cut and polished in the same way that mine diamonds are. So, yes. They are, it's hard for consumers to understand because we are…

Michael: I was telling someone that.

Pamela: We are not trained to think that way.

Michael: No. I, there was a friend and they were getting engaged and I said, literally, go get a lab grown one. You get a bigger diamond. It's a diamond. It's not that it, forget the craziness of where it comes from that you're destroying the earth or it's like the, you know, the blood diamond trade where you have young kids going 3,000 feet down to try to mine this stuff.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: You know, and all the, the, the issues with all of that ethically as well is what it does to the earth. And now you have this capability.

Pamela: Yeah. And I love that it expands the diamond market too. I think that, who knows how this will shake up, but there will be two markets. There will be people who want mined diamonds for all of the reasons that it's mined from the earth. And that there's a rarity factor. But this just expands the world of diamonds. And I love that.

Michael: Well, it's in the U.S. I think it's $50 billion.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: I mean we're, I think the U.S. market's almost 50% of the diamond trade.

Pamela: Yeah. It's, this is the world's biggest market. And you know, I think that as I've talked to women and talked about these stones on the Roseate side, it allows us to design with bigger diamonds and not have the very expensive price points added to it.

Michael: You have amazing price points, by the way.

Pamela: Yes, we do.

Michael: Yeah. I have, I have some of the lab grown diamonds.

Pamela: Yep.

Michael: Yeah. And they're beautiful by the way. And no one can tell because it's a diamond.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: I keep saying. But now, now you have all of this and you're gonna launch this company.

Pamela: Yes.

Michael: It's you and your husband.

Pamela: It's, yes. My husband and I are the founders. Mike was a founding investor. So he's a great advisor to us. And we're a bit of a, we're a very typical startup. We are a patchwork.

Michael: Scrappy?

**Pamela:**I have learned how to be scrappy. My husband just said to me that, yeah, you learn. You know, there's, you learn that it is very expensive to try to build a new brand. And I have been very humbled as to how to build an audience with this brand and really reach people and gain subscribers and followers and an audience. That part of it…

Michael: Well, and I think when you are revolutionary and you know, as a startup, you're the first mover. That's because you're gonna have to create the audience that will then start to follow this idea.

Pamela: Right. And we're inundated today, all of us with beautiful but hundreds of brands in spaces that we love. Right? So if you're interested in jewelry and you're on Instagram or you're on TikTok, you are bombarded with brands. And that's true of any category because it's actually quite, I would say, quite easy. There's low barriers to enter on. You can have a Shopify shop, you know, you can create or render a set of SKUs and you can put yourself out there. And so it's very hard to differentiate from the beginning.

Michael: Do you think about creating a product that becomes iconic for your company?

Pamela: Always. Always.

Michael: I think these brooches, 'cause the brooches have become huge. We saw that at the Met Gala.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: You know, now they're everywhere.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: In ads. You have amazing broaches in dragonflies and butterflies. By the way, unisex.

Pamela: Yep.

Michael: I actually wore one to the Time 100 event and I sat next to the CEO of Saks and Tory Birch, and they all were raving about, where did you get that? It's beautiful. You're actually wearing one.

Pamela: I am. I'm wearing the butterfly Michael wore.

Michael: Yeah. It's stunning.

Pamela: We're always thinking about mega brands have mega collections. We always say that. So when you think about jewelry and the world's most famous brands and whether they're, you know, aspirational brands like Pandora to the Cartier love bracelet that you're wearing, Michael, big brands you can recognize.

Michael: I need a pearl one.

Pamela: Oh, I can help you with that. Big brands have jewelry that you can recognize. And that ultimately that creates this must have iconic piece. And that's, we're tiny, but that's what we're after.

Michael: So you had to have hiccups, struggles like, “Oh my God, I dunno that we're gonna make it.” Talk to us about that. Because so many people see sort of this beautiful end result. They do not realize the years or the months.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And some of the struggles with “Oh my gosh, the capital piece, the, you know, you know, “Will we make it through?”

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And startups are difficult. Small businesses are tough.

Pamela: Yeah. Look, we're still in that phase. So we launched in May of ‘23. I think it became very quickly that it was gonna be too expensive and too long of a runway. I'm not the world's youngest entrepreneur. So starting this leader in life…

Michael: You look young.

Pamela: Thank you. Starting this later in life gives me less runway. But…

Michael: You'll appreciate this. When they did your bio, they did a typo. They go, she joined in 1914. I go, “Wow, she's really doing well.”

Pamela: That's about right. You got it right. But yeah, you know, there have been many hiccups and I struggle with it every day. I'm very optimistic about the brand. The name Roseate. It actually means rose-colored optimism. But it is expensive. Everything comes at a fee. You know, you have to hit a certain scale before you can hire people to really help you scale. I have wanted to build this brick by brick. So we do not have big backers. We are friends and family and self-funded. And that means though, that you have to make every dollar count. I learned the hard way about doing things too soon.

I laugh all the time and say I had learned so much that I wish people had told me on day one. And then I think about it and I think, “Oh, some people did try to tell me on day one,” you just often have to walk through that door and make that mistake. And I've made a lot of mistakes and I continue to learn every day. But what I would say was that if you're starting a brand and you're building an audience, go for tactics to spread the word about your brand. Don't start to market in a very traditional sense if you don't have an audience yet.

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: So you're amplifying to an audience you haven't built yet. And so if I could rewind the tape and do it all again when I started, I would be uber tactical. I would…

Michael: What were you trying to be like immediately? David Yurman with Kate Moss?

Pamela: Well, we have, we were, you know, I'm lucky that I have friends in the industry and they did help me in the beginning. And we created some beautiful imagery. We have a beautiful, if I can say so, website. And so we have…

Michael: I think I saw your husband doing photography.

Pamela: Yeah. That's what it's, we've had to scale that back because you learn that perfection is the enemy of the good, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: And so when you're a scrappy little startup, you're not expected to be perfect. And in fact, that can work against you a bit because you look like a much larger brand than you are.

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: And you look expensive. And you can't afford all of these big with a, we used to say capital M Marketing, if you're still in the little lowercase m marketing. And that's really what I've learned. And you have to learn what…

Michael: Did you have like issues with supply chain or you were pretty good about that? Or did you have any hiccups like, “Oh God, we that was a mistake”?

Pamela: Yeah, those things come with the territory. So when you're making jewelry, there are delays. Casting machines break, setters get sick, materials are delayed. And we're small. So I do understand when we're working with our manufacturers, we're not at the front of the line. But our manufacturers have been very, you know, we've, with many of our manufacturers, we have relationships. I have relationships that go back many years. So they've been super supportive.

But sure. You know, it's like at every turn, I would say I didn't quite understand the world having spent so long, decades in an institution. I didn't really understand that when you're running a startup, you had, you do everything. When kids, when people come to me and ask about roles that we may have, if someone says strategy, I say, “Oh no.” Like you have to come, if you wanna come help, we do everything, right? My husband's doing the photography.

Michael: You're gonna be helping with the packaging and the boxing and the…

Pamela: Exactly. If you're, it's your turn to print the labels. You print the labels. So, and that's what it's like. And that's fun. I like that. I think that if you know you want to do something like a strategy role, then a bigger company is the place for you.

Michael: That's awesome. So you have price points that vary and I think we should talk about that 'cause you're very reasonable.

Pamela: Yes.

Michael: For beautiful jewelry. You've had interest from really interesting jewelry designers that wanna come on and they're collaborating with you.

Pamela: Yep. Yep. That part has been fantastic. I really think about design in terms of designing for American women. And I think American women have…

Michael: And men.

Pamela: And everyone. Yeah. Whoever you are, we're thinking about you. But Americans, I should say, and our consumers are primarily women, have a very unique sense of style. So American women have this unbelievable balance. And actually Michael's style, if you, you probably only see in the back of his head, but is quite like this as well, that are very comfortable in high-low, in wearing very casual a stack of bracelets that can be…

Michael: Let's see, you've got 'em on here.

Pamela: I've got all Roseate on here. But most American women and men have a piece of string from their kids. Maybe something plastic. A branded, a Cartier love bracelet.

Michael: Well this has become huge as well. The wrist, the wristband.

Pamela: Right. Your wristband. And it really, you're stack and it talks about your personality. So as it comes to price point, I love, this is a very, in my mind, distinctly American style. And so we think about it…

Michael: So you can see it on camera. She's, yeah, there we go.

Pamela: You can think about it. That I can wear my Yurman bracelet with my Cartier love and my Tiffany tea, and then a piece, piece of plastic that my kid gave me, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Pamela: With a diamond line bracelet. And that's the way we think about Roseate. It is that you can wear your silver.

Michael: I love the pearls with it.

Pamela: Thank you.

Michael: So just, just describe this because the people that aren't watching on YouTube.

Pamela: Oh, sure. So we've got, let's see, these three bracelets. This is our pearl bracelet. This is from a new farm that we are working with in Japan called Kakuta Farms. And it allows us to do white smaller pearls with a sterling silver clasp. This is actually a product development piece that we're working on. These are Tahitian pearls from our partner in Tahiti. And these are actually rubies that are from Greenland.

Michael: That's, it's beautiful.

Pamela: So you could trace these all the way back to a mine in Greenland. And so as we get into other materials…

Michael: These are like, not pinkish.

Pamela: They’re pink.

Michael: It’s like a type of pink. Beautiful.

Pamela: Pinker then you would think of as rubies. But this we're dreaming about. Then we have our water drop link in Sterling silver, which is formed from two water drops that come together. We like to say always with a pearl. So we have a little piece of Mother of Pearl right there. And then I have a lab grown diamond line bracelet on.

Michael: That's beautiful.

Pamela: So when we think about design, we think about this idea that you can come in and buy a silver jewelry bracelet. I think our prices started around $200, or you can come in and buy a diamond line bracelet for a couple of thousand dollars. But really this hierarchy of prices that allows us to have some really accessible gifts under a thousand dollars. We've got some lovely things under $500.

Michael: Now tell us, you know, your employees, it's you, your husband.

Pamela: Yep.

Michael: How many other employees do you have?

Pamela: Let's see, we had two people, two or three people helping us out when we had the store. We had a store for a year on Bleecker Street. We called it a shop up. And I loved having the store. We ended up closing it over the summer, but we're gonna open new space either just in December or probably spring of next year. So stay tuned on that.

Michael: And what area? In New York? Or…

Pamela: Either in New York. I did love being on Bleecker Street, but it's possible we might go to Washington DC or Newberry Street in Boston. So stay tuned. We're looking at space.

Michael: Oh, I know Newberry Street. I went to school in Boston.

Pamela: Oh yeah, we're looking. We like this idea of…

Michael: But most of what you've done has been online. It's been e-commerce.

Pamela: Yes. And we're starting with some wholesale partners. So we just launched with Joan Shepp in Philadelphia, and we're having some conversations with fashion independent shops that also carry jewelry. That is, it seems to be a very…

Michael: Well, I sell you to Two Minds, which is this men and women's store that's down in Meat Packing.

Pamela: Oh yeah.

Michael: They have all of these sort of independent sort of jewelry designers that people sort of know.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: But small, small. And I go, “You need to have…” you guys have to be there.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And I said, because of this idea of ethical sustainability, that you're gonna have generations that are going to, that's going to appeal to.

Pamela: Yeah.

Michael: And they're like, who? What's the name?

Pamela: Oh. I have to check them out.

Michael: Yeah, Two Minds.

Pamela: So we are starting to launch with partners. That'll be a build, that'll be a slow build, because to sell our product, you have to love our story. You have to love the material. It's, you know, we're looking for partners to grow and tell that story with us. So we'll bring, you know, we'll start working with people step by step.

Michael: Well, how has TriNet helped you with this?

Pamela: I was saying when I walked in that TriNet was one of the best decisions that I made. So when I said, I've made many mistakes, TriNet was not one of them. And so I'm very grateful for TriNet as a partner. Actually, TriNet does exactly what most third-party providers tell you that they're gonna do. But then it doesn't end up that way. So when you're a small business and you're trying to do everything, and you think about things like payroll and healthcare and taxes and just employee manuals, and the list goes on and on and paid time off, and it's overwhelming. And those, those things could take all of your time and you wanna do them. Right. And so friends of ours who both had startups, they're married, but they had individual startups, both used TriNet. And in the beginning they said, you have to use TriNet. And so we were so lucky to be introduced from this from the beginning. We do have, we talked about employees. We have a couple of people who are full-time and part-time who help us and also are on the, the TriNet platform with us. And it has been such a relief to have a partner that actually when TriNet says, they'll take care of these four things for you, you guys take care of these things for us. And it's just, that's, it's rare actually. We've been through some other providers where that wasn't the case and the headaches come back on you ultimately. And that has not been the case, so.

Michael: Well, that's wonderful.

Pamela: I thank you.

Michael: Well, we thank you for being a customer, but we love your product. And you know, this idea of this podcast is to really showcase, honestly, small businesses which are doing amazing things. And it's sort of to make the small big and, and to give attention to positive things that are happening. There's so many things we hear about that aren't. And, and to showcase a company like this and hopefully help you in more ways, and not just with HR, but giving you a voice.

Pamela: Yeah, thanks.

Michael: Becomes important to us because we feel a part of your company, you know, being a co-employer and it, and we wanna see you do really well.

Pamela: Thank you.

Michael: And I love your product, so I do have a, a special interest in it, so…

Pamela: Yeah, thanks. We really appreciate it.

Michael: I wanna thank you for coming and sort of telling your story. I think it's important for small businesses to know that it's not always easy and it's hard. And the more support you have, the more tenacity, the more belief you have in your purpose, and you have an amazing purpose. And I think to me, that's exciting. And it's great design by the way.

Pamela: Thanks. Appreciate it. Pleasure to be here.

Michael: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. Now you can buy this jewelry at roseatejewelry.com and I'm gonna spell that out so that you have it, so you can write it down and go on and take a look at all this beautiful jewelry. It's R-O-S-E-A-T-E-J-E-W-E-L-R-Y.com.

I want to remind everybody that our PeopleForce Podcast by TriNet is committed to helping small to medium-size businesses. The PeopleForce Podcast drops new episodes every month and we hope you continue catching our new episodes on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and TriNet.com/rise. To get relevant SMB news and info, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and to our newsletter at TriNet.com/insights.