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Ms. Yacobovsky, who formed the fashion jewelry e-commerce site in early 2011 in partnership with college buddy Amy Jain, is now reaching out to the “ hands on” market.
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Daniella Yacobovsky, who co-founded BaubleBar as an online jewelry retailer offering both stylish and competitively priced fashion accessories, from some of the warlords top designers as well as from the brand’s own exclusively designed private label, is now taking the company’s expansion a stage further by opening 35 in-store outlets in Nordstrom stores throughout North America.
The BaubleBar was conceived by Daniella more than 10 years ago when she met with Amy Jain her co-founder when they studied together at Harvard Business School. The project was put on hold for a number of years as the pair continued their own careers in the world of corporate finance, with Daniella spending some time both at American Capital Securities and the UBS Investment Bank.
Both Daniella and Amy shared the common concept that by offering their products online they would succeed in filling a niche for professional women on the lookout for something different in fashion accessories.
According to Daniella Yacobovsky, when she and Ms. Jain established the Bauble Bar website they did so on the understanding that there was a lack of a single go-to place for fashion jewelry where the target market they were aiming for could be confident that they were always going to find what they’re looking for. “Instead of one place, women end up shopping at 25 to 30 places or randomly picking up a piece of costume jewelry while they’re shopping for clothing.” Daniella explained.
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Late in 2010, Daniella Yacobovsky and Amy Jain decided that the time was right to put ideas into action and with thanks to some initial seed capital funding they were ready to officially launch their e-commerce site in January 2011.
BaubleBar turned out to be a successful project, and this is another push forward thanks to a $4.5 million Series A funding round which they picked up in April 2012, with Accel Partners and Greycroft Partners being the principal contributors.
The advantage of establishing a web portal, according to Daniella, was is that the company enjoys access to so much data and analytics and we can really leverage that and take advantage of that by seeing how people interact with our site in real time. “We react to this information and will be constantly adding new product to the site four days a week, a higher pace than most fashion companies, thanks to that high level of engagement with our customers.” Daniella summed up.
According to Ms. Yacobovsky one of the most fundamental change in direction that the company has made to date is switching from buying fashion jewelry through the wholesale market applying a markup and selling it. Since the early days BaubleBar have been gradually switching to designing their own products, in their New York based design studios in the heart of the city’s hectic garment district. Once what looks like a potential hot seller has been developed, BaubleBar farm out its production to manufacturing units all over the world. Recently the company has also begun to assemble some of their own designs in their workshops
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Having built up a successful online presence the next logical progression, according to Daniella and Amy, was introduced there products into retailing outlets outlets, testing the water with two locally-based jewelry stores in New York City later going on to design an exclusive collection which they marketed through specialty apparel chain Anthropologie that was only launched this January.
Now the next stage in the BaubleBar initiative to take their products to a place where the public can see them at first hand, in selected Nordstrom department stores initially for an eight-week run.
Daniella Yacobovsky hastened to point out that the retail prices at Nordstrom will be exactly the same as can be found on their online portal, although the BaubleBar design team has come up with a number of some exclusive designs that will be exclusive to Nordstrom. After the eight weeks in the 35 stores is over, Daniella and Amy are optimistic that they will be capable of turning the trial period into a permanent one, as well as uplinks similar outlets in some of the other 260 Nordstrom stores.
Daniella Yacobovsky holds a B.S. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania as well as a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
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