Kendra Scott: Fashion, Family, and Philanthropy
- Renny Donaldson
- Oct 7, 2024
- 3 min read
By Renny Donaldson '27
Kendra Scott, the owner of the billion dollar jewelry company known for their bright colors, creative shapes, and mainly teenage girl clientele, originally started her company out of a spare bedroom. Founded in 2002, Kendra Scott began making jewelry as a passion project, eventually using her entrepreneurship skills to turn her hobby into a wildly successful business. Although her business has changed greatly over the course of two decades, Kendra Scott’s values stay the same, with a focus on giving back to the community and leaving the world better than she found it.
Kendra Scott products have changed the jewelry industry, adding in more color and original designs to every piece of jewelry than other brands on the market. The core values of Kendra Scott products are color, shape, material, and value, which are shown through their fun yet timeless pieces. Kendra Scott jewelry uses bright gemstones with a variety of color ways and different styles, from the classic Elisa Pendant Necklace to their new Sports Collection with all sorts of sports inspired necklaces, charms, and bracelets. Not only does Kendra Scott offer a variety of designs, but also quality products at an affordable price, influencing millions of people to purchase Kendra Scott products. Most of their jewelry is 14k gold or rhodium plated, meaning that for proper care it should not be exposed to water, perfumes, or other products as it will tarnish. Nonetheless, Kendra Scott offers hundreds of products, including seven separate collections with a variety of styles that everyone can appreciate.
As shown through her company’s mission statement, Kendra Scott not only cares about jewelry itself, but also what her brand is able to do with its success, incorporating family and philanthropy into her business. Kendra Scott uses profits from her company to fund many different programs, having donated over $50 million dollars to various causes supporting women and youth. One of Kendra Scott’s initiatives includes Color Bar®, which are free customizable jewelry stations brought to pediatric hospitals for patients and their families. This initiative is a part of Kendra Scott’s many programs funded by the Kendra Scott foundation to give back, including Yellow for Pink, Education, Kendra Cares, and Entrepreneurship. The Kendra Scott Foundation was created in 2023 to help support these programs and raise money and awareness for a wide variety of charitable causes. Not only are there options to donate to the Kendra Scott Foundation as well as other foundations and charities on their website, but many products also note that a part of their profits will go to different causes, including 20% of proceeds from select Color Bar® pink stone styles donating to breast cancer initiatives.
Kendra Scott also makes it clear that family is an important part of her business’s values, and balancing work and family life is a center of the work dynamic. As Kendra Scott is a mom of three, being able to put family first was an extremely important concept for her when designing her ideal company. Scott wants to be able for herself as well as other parents to be able to chase their dreams while also being present in their children's lives. Because more than 95% of the Kendra Scott team is women, Scott is very accommodating and wants a work-life balance for her employees. These accommodations include large benefit packages as well as paid parental leave, and thoughtful details including a nail salon, fitness center and daycare within the Kendra Scott headquarters in Austin, Texas. All of these details show that Kendra Scott truly cares about the family, fashion, and philanthropic parts of her business.
Kendra Scott’s story on how she built her business from the ground up, still managing to keep her values at the center of it is truly inspiring. Scott’s passion project that turned into a billion dollar business really interests me because it reveals that if you genuinely like what you do, hard work and dedication will come naturally, allowing your dream to become a reality. Kendra Scott’s perseverance and success really impacts the way I view business, showing me and hopefully other young girls that you do not have to compromise your morals and principals to be successful, but that we are all able to use accomplishments to give back and help those around us.
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