Samantha Wills had designed about 11,000 pieces of jewellery when the alarm bells started ringing. From a stall at the Bondi Markets and $80,000 of debt to her name, her namesake jewellery business flourished to adorn some of the celebrity world’s biggest names. From Pink to Eva Mendes to Drew Barrymore to Rachel Zoe, the Samantha Wills signature style was statement, bohemian, and so in demand that at one point, they had sold nearly 1 million units of their Bohemian Bardot ring in 360 different colourways. To celebrate her newly published memoir, Of Gold and Dust, we find out more about her extraordinary career path.
For one of Australia's most loved entrepreneurs, Samantha Wills, it’s never been about the numbers - instead, she always returns to what she calls the “human element”. It’s always been about storytelling. “People can replicate your product”, she says, “they can replicate your packaging, but they cannot replicate your story. And that's the currency. Because no one has the same story, and that's the authenticity that has to stay.” It’s a lesson she learned the hard way, after a stint in New York saw her grapple with the brand’s identity. “The biggest mistake I've ever, ever made in business”, she explains, “is I changed our brand aesthetic, pretty much within one season, because I got into such deep conversation with Imposter Syndrome. Needless to say, it did not work.”
Today, Samantha Wills jewellery is no more. By the time she had designed her 12,000th piece, she had made the momentous decision to close the company. But although the business has retired, Samantha Wills has not. Her new book Of Gold and Dust details her incredible story (the ‘overnight success’ that took her over a decade to pull off), as well as her meteoric success, her run-ins with financial problems, and the push-pull between the creative and strategic elements of running an international company.
In conversation with Georgie Abay, here, she pulls back the curtain on everything. From the deeply personal, like her battle with endometriosis and the decision to freeze her eggs, to the practicalities of business and why finding the right business partner was a game changer for Samantha Wills Jewellery. Why? Well, she tells us, “if you've walked a path, you have to turn around at some point and shine light on it for others that are wanting to walk a similar path.” And she’s willing to shine that light on all the lessons she’s learnt about building a brand, seeking investment, packaging, imitation, and more.
From the sparkly jewels, to the nitty gritty of bleeding fingers working from the kitchen table at 4am, let’s lay it all bare...
I loved getting a glimpse into your entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. By the time you were 11, you were running a business selling handmade jewellery in the playground. Can you share some stories of your entrepreneurial spirit when you were a child?
I’m often asked, are you born as an entrepreneur or is it something you take on? I grew up with parents who always ran small businesses. I remember from a very early age, I'd get all the food out of Mum's pantry and then set it up like a café and try to sell it back to them. So maybe you're born with it, or you just learn extortion from an early age!
When I was around 11, my mum and dad had a small clothing boutique, and I would sell my jewellery there on the counter. I’d spend all Saturday there, waiting for my parents to finish work, complaining that I was bored. Dad once said to me, "Go make yourself useful. Go and clean the sign on the roof."
There I was, 12 years old, up on a ladder on this tin, slanted roof, scrubbing this sign. I scrubbed halfway to the middle of the sign. It looked like a very good before and after. My dad came out and said "Wow. It's so dirty! You've done a great job. It's going to look great when you've finished." I was like, "No, no, no. I'm finished." He said, "You've only done half of it." And I said, "No, I've done half my free trial. If you want the rest done, it'll be 20 bucks." And he was just like, "You little shit. Get off the roof." So obviously I cleaned the rest of the sign. But then my eye caught all the other signs. There was probably 16 stores at this outdoor mall. I went along and cleaned half of all the signs, then I'd go into each store and be like, "Mrs. Baxter, come out and see how dirty your sign was and how clean it can be for 20 bucks!" So I think it's just extortion. I'm not sure if it was entrepreneurial!
What role has sisterhood played in your life?
If we think about all the women in our network, both immediate and that kind of outer orbit, if everyone in that network exchanged something - whether that's a contact or an instruction, whatever it is - if we're all exchanging something, by universal law it just lifts everyone up. So it's paramount. It's not just important, it's paramount.
I know that in those early days when you started doing jewellery parties, it was really word of mouth. Can you talk through how this was such a key part of your brand-building in the early days?
It was a time before the internet. I know I sound a thousand years old when I say that. But 2004, people were updating their website like once a year. But before digital at all, as brands, the hierarchy was the brand speaking to the customer. "Here's what you should wear this season," and it was a one-way kind of monologue.
I think digital really flattened that landscape, so it got to a point where you couldn't, as a brand, charge one price in one market and one price in another market, because the transparency was there. So then I think that started a two-way conversation with the consumer.
But what digital media and social media did was allow us to have this real human element to it. And what I mean by that is sharing vulnerably, and through those vulnerabilities, that connection. So when you add those three elements: brand, customer, and vulnerability, that's where community is formed, because that's the connection from a heart space there.
People often think creatives are dreamers, which they are, but they’re also exceptionally driven and aren’t afraid to chase their dreams. Would you agree? And how would you describe living with a creative mind?
I decided very early on that I wanted to be a commercial creative. At the end of the 15 year Samantha Wills Jewellery journey, I've designed 12,000 pieces of jewellery. That's a commercial company at that point. You're not sitting there with these gorgeous inspirations boards for 12,000 pieces of jewellery. That's like, "Here's a matrix for David Jones. Here's what we need for Nordstrom. Here's what we need for QVC." And it's a real commerciality to it.
So I think the brand element is the dreamer, and the business element is the doer. And if you're a creative that wants to make money then you're a commercial creative, and that's the crossroads that you meet that connection at.
There are some key people you write about in your book who have been highly influential in the direction your career has gone. Talk to me about how your persistence paid off here?
I was a solopreneur for the first three years, so wore absolutely every hat within the business. And at the time, from 22 to 26, I knew how to build a brand, but I didn't know how to run a business. And so I built the profile of the brand up here, and we were stocked in 60 stores, and it looked so glossy, it was great. But I got myself into $80,000 worth of debt.
So the banks, rightly so, wouldn't give me another credit card. I knew I was at the end of the line. It was just keeping my head above water at that point. And I was eating baked bean jaffles for dinner. There was just no money to rub together.
I think the logical thing to do back then would have been to close, because $80,000 in, you clearly have no idea how to run a business. But there was something in me that I can't even put words. I knew the Samantha Wills jewellery brand could be so much more.
So someone got me an interview with this guy who had a company, and he said, "I really like what you do. My daughters are about your age. I'd really like to help you out. I'll pay off your entire debt as my investment." My vision was, "I just need to get out of debt right now." It was so insular. He sends the contract over. I sign it and this time next week I'm going to be out of debt.
And as the universe works, my phone rang the next day and it was from someone who I used to work with. And he said, "We really need a women's retail jewellery line design, would you be interested? You're all rich and famous now, we probably can't afford you." And I was like, "If you give me a slice of bread, you can afford me at this point." That's how dire it was.
His CEO at the time was Geoff Bainbridge, who went on to be my business partner. But it was this serendipitous crossing of paths just at the right time, because the contract that I had signed and was going to return the following Friday was to give up 51% of the company. And that was what he wanted at buy-in. And in my desperation at, I think 25 at that time, I just couldn't see the forest for the trees.
So when I met Geoff, he advised me not to do that. He wanted me to come and work for his company full-time. And I said, "Look, I can't. I can't give up this Samantha Wills jewellery. I've come so far.” So I was kind of contracting to that business and working on my own.
And every time I'd see him I'd be like, "Would you get involved with my company? I don't want a cent from you, just your business mind." He'd say, "No, no, no." And, literally, on the 15th time I asked him, he said, "Oh my God, I'm so sick of you asking me. I'll think about it." And I said, "I'll take that as a half-yes." I signed over 30% equity to him. We didn't put a cent of external money in over the following 11 years, and we didn't have a loss-making year since that year. So with his business mind and my creative one, that was, I think, the meeting of that commercial and creative.
I loved the story of how you went to him with the idea of packing your jewellery in beautiful wooden boxes from India – can you share this story with us and also how this showed the importance of following your gut instinct?
At the time, the jewellery I was making, yes, it was a statement, but it wasn't revolutionary. Anyone can make jewellery. And I don't say that to downplay what we did, because I think what we did was really good, but it's not standalone by any means. So I received this box from an Indian supplier at one of the trade shows, and I just thought it was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever laid my hands on. And I thought, ‘Imagine if every piece of jewellery came in this hand carved wooden box.’
And my business partner was just like, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ They're obviously not flat-packed. He said ‘Do you have any idea the logistics of shipping wooden boxes around the world? Order a few and just test it and see how it goes.’
And so I ordered a few of them, and I didn't tell our department stores we were testing, I just said "Here's our new packaging." I did jazz hands presentation. And they said, "This is amazing." I'm all about asking for forgiveness not permission. So we implemented it, and sales tripled that season. And they just put us on the map. I think in branding, you have to have different touch points. People can replicate your product, and then they can replicate your packaging, and there's all these different things. So you can't just rely on one pillar in branding.
And I know that Pink had one, didn't she?
Pink was out here for one of her tours. It was the Funhouse tour. And my friend was the host of Video Hits, our MTV show in Australia. I said, "Oh, Faustina, can I send over a gift for Pink?" Thinking she'd give it to her after the show. And so I'm sitting there with my Vegemite toast watching it one morning, and they wrap up the interview. This is on camera. And she says, "Before you go, here's a gift from jewellery designer Samantha Wills." And Pink's like, "Oh, amazing." I shipped it over in a courier bag, with a thousand staples, so it's still in the courier bag on air. And all these staples fly everywhere. And she's like, "Oh my gosh, the box." And she holds it up and she's like, "Oh no, there's jewellery inside." So it was just an incredible promo for the box, the jewellery - it was amazing.
And then she went on to wear so much of our jewellery. And when a singer is touring, obviously they're holding the microphone, all our rings were front and center. And she actually wanted to buy the entire collection after she received those few pieces. I was like, "We will send it to her for free." And she was adamant - “No, I want to pay for every single piece." And I think as a young designer that was just the most gracious reply from her. And it's stayed with me.
From your experience with celebrity endorsement – and there have been countless celebrities who have worn your jewellery from Pink to Eva Mendes to Drew Barrymore to Rachel Zoe - how important is celebrity endorsement?
Our next big one after that was Eva Mendes, and she wore our Bohemian Bardot ring, which is a big teardrop statement ring. And from the day that she wore it, for the 10 years that followed, that ring never left the top of our bestsellers list. We did over 360 colorways, nearly 1 million of them moved through our business, so it had a whole cult status following of its own.
(But that was) before social media had really taken off. Now, celebrities show us what they're wearing every day. Back then, they get a photo, it goes in a weekly magazine, so it was a very different pipeline back then compared to now. But having said that, we had Taylor Swift too. I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan. We had her wearing it in Vogue in 2011, and it didn't even move the needle on sales.
There's so many elements, right? So there's the right shot, especially with jewellery. The earrings could be behind her hair, or the ring could have flipped around. So getting the right shot, the right celebrity, at the time. Eva Mendes had just come out of rehab at the time, so the paparazzi were trying to get all these shots of her, so she was a hot topic of conversation at the time.
And then the other thing from a logistics point of view is you have to have stock of that item, because if people see it, they want it instantly. And it has to be picked up quite urgently, that's what gets the momentum behind it.
So for whatever reason, the stars aligned for us on that product. And that product didn't just change the trajectory of the business, it changed the trajectory of my life. That's how powerful that one placement was.
But as you said, we had so many celebrities wearing it, and a lot of them don't even move the needle. So if I was to start a product brand today, I would definitely be investing my money more in a digital marketing space, rather than trying to chase down celebrity placement. I just think it's a different time.
In your book you write – “starting your own brand is a self-indulgent pursuit” – what did you mean by this?
It has to be self-indulgent because you have to give all and more of yourself to do that. And I think when you ever so modestly name it after yourself, like I did, your journey is intrinsically linked to that brand journey. And the more that you talk about that, the more it personifies it. And I think that that's what people want. They want that connection. And I think too, when it's someone's name, you naturally get all the kind of public praise, whereas really if it was just Samantha Wills, I'd still be on my dining table in my flat hand-making jewellery for 17 hours a day.
When you were breaking into the US market, Geoff told you that ‘global brands aren’t built overnight’. What did he say to you that day that you haven’t forgotten?
I moved over to the States when I was 28. And I think as brand-builders, we can have the desire for wherever we want our brand to sit. So we can go out like, "I just want to be a tier one brand which is in Vogue and Harper's and all the top 10 magazines, and I only want to sit in top tier retail." But at the end of the day, it's the consumer that tells us where our brand sits, right? If they're just buying, in my case, $140 bracelet sets, then you're a $140 bracelet set brand in a market research sense.
We'd found our success at the time with a tier two consumer who I spoke very relatively to. I spoke about our Bondi Markets' origins. We were very much a bohemian brand. It was the statement stones, a lot of color, it was a lot of burnished metals, more is more styling. And so I go over to New York and just get mesmerized by everything that is New York City, and all these beautiful heritage brands.
And really the biggest mistake I've ever, ever made in business, is I changed our brand aesthetic, pretty much within one season because I got into such deep conversation with Imposter Syndrome. Because I was out in the market doing all this market research, and all the top tier retailers didn't have bohemian, statement size, burnished metals. It was very petite, fine metals. And so I changed the brand language in one season. Needless to say, it did not work. It didn't resonate in the new market. It pretty much isolated our existing successful market. And I had to sit in the rubble of that mess.
Geoff very graciously said, "International brands are not built in five years. They're not built really in 10 years. Brands that have longevity are built over time." And it's that consistency, and it's back to authenticity. And that's what I really had to do in that mess that I made, was go back to the girl at the Bondi Markets table, and ask her why we started this brand in the first place, and pick up the pieces that still served us from our origins, but take them forward and evolve the brand.
People can replicate your product, they can replicate your packaging, but they cannot replicate your story. And that's the currency. Because no one has the same story, and that's the authenticity that has to stay.
I love how you write about how after 12 years the media still called you an overnight success. You write that this concept of an “overnight success” is harmful for young entrepreneurs. Can you tell me about why this narrative is so misleading?
I remember back in 2004 when I was starting out, and I was sitting at my dining table, my hands would be bleeding, I had this little corkboard up on the wall and I pinned things that inspired me onto it. And at the time, I was obsessed with female entrepreneurs and female designers, and because social media wasn't a thing, I would wait at the news agency for when the glossy fashion mags would come out, and turn to the designer profile pages and rip them out and put them on the pin board.
And at four o'clock in the morning when my hands are bleeding and there's no other lights on in the street, and I feel like I'm the only person truly alive in the entire world with $80,000 dollars debt on my shoulders, I looked up at these inspirational pictures and they reflected nothing of what my reality was. And that's one shot. Now, we've got Instagram which is this entire reel of filtered perfection, and what we normalise becomes our truth. Not the truth, but our truth.
And I think that it's really important, if you've walked a path, in some way you have to turn around at some point and shine light on it for others that are wanting to walk a similar path. So I think there's a responsibility that comes with that, and that's what I hope to do through the Samantha Wills Foundation. That's what the entire premise of this book is. The original working title for it was ‘Public Brand, Private Life’, to show the highlight reel and the hurdles, but also this human element.
How would you describe the process of closing a brand?
As a creative person, you thrive off that lifeblood of creating inspiration, and there's a little flickering in you when you're enjoying something and it flows through you. And at that point, having designed 11,000 pieces of jewellery at that time, my flicker started to go out a little bit. I thought "Oh, this will pass. This will pass." And six months, 12 months, more jewellery, more jewellery. So by the time I got to 12,000 pieces of jewellery, I knew I was designing it with my hands but not my heart. And I knew that it was a bigger issue. But I still thought "The brand is still in growth. It's still a success." Logically, it makes no sense to walk away from it. So if you talk about the thinking filter and then the feeling filter, I was like, "Logically, that's crazy talk."
It probably took me two years of that internal distance to get to that turning point of “It's okay to close." And I'd never even thought it was an option.
I woke up every morning for the next two weeks, I didn't tell a soul, and I just thought, "I'm going to pretend I've already done it and ask myself how I feel about it. Not what I think about it, but what I feel about it." And it felt like the right thing to do. And I think there's a real importance to notice the difference between those filters, because you can't fake a feeling. Our thinking mind is there to keep us in familiarity. That's the safety of it. So it's always going to list all the reasons why taking something that makes no sense is a bad idea. But if it feels right, you can't fake that feeling. So to get to the decision was definitely a journey in itself.
On the day that we closed, you know in the final scene of Cheers where they turn the lights off in the bar and then it fades to black? It felt a bit like that, because we turned the website off at 5 PM, and it just had a banner that said, "Samantha Wills is now closed." And by that time, I had mourned the break up, in a way. But then there's a whole logistical sense behind that. So that's turning it off to the world, but then undoing so much behind the scenes. It was probably another six months of logistics, breaking everything down. So it was a process in itself.
After you closed your brand, you discovered you had stage 4 endometriosis. Where are you up to in this journey now?
I'm just over one year on from my operation, and it's Endometriosis Awareness Month this month. There's a lot more conversations happening around it, but it affects one in ten women, and still some medical professionals aren't even trained in it. So it's something that is very important to me, and it has no cure.
I'm back at the doctor's next month to continue to check. Because it essentially grows back, it's just how fast it grows back. I spoke to someone the other day at an event in Brisbane, and she's up to her 13th operation. She's 27 years old. There's no rhyme or reason for who gets it or what causes it. It's still in that research phase.
Can you share your decision to freeze your eggs and what do you want other women to know about egg freezing?
I actually went into the doctor to talk about egg freezing, and that's when the diagnosis of the endo was first detected. And so I had to have the operation, and then you have to wait six months to start the egg freezing process. So by the time I did it in December, I was getting the hormone injections the same week I recorded the audio book, so I was like, "This is awful timing!" You're reading out the darkest parts of your life, it's a very emotional audio book.
I just turned 39 in December, and I thought at 39 I would know without a doubt if I wanted children or not. And there's been other things in my life, specifically through my entrepreneurial journey, where I think, "Unequivocally, I know I want to do X, Y and Z." So I was expecting that same clarity around wanting children. And specifically at the age I am now, because I think it's such a known age that it's kind of that crossroads, if you have to decide. And so I froze them.
I just wanted to state really honestly, in case it resonated with other people, that it's okay not to know, and if you're in the position where you can afford yourself more options or a bit more time, then I would really recommend doing that. Because for me, it took a weight off that decision-making process.