This Billion-Dollar Brand’s Covid Strategy: Act Like a Startup Again

Austin-based jewelry and home decor seller Kendra Scott reminds herself that there are lessons in every challenge and that the customer is always the boss.

Kendra Scott had 2020 planned out for her eponymous jewelry and home decor company when all of her plans–along with those of so many businesses–changed in an instant. “Covid-19 was not part of our plan,” Scott told Inc. editor-at-large Tom Foster during Inc.‘s latest Real Talk: Business Reboot webinar Thursday. “The best-laid plans don’t always come to fruition.”

Scott, who’s based in Austin, says she had to return to a “startup mentality” to face the health crisis that temporarily closed the doors on her 108 retail locations and the economic freeze that altered her supply chain and changed customers’ purchasing habits. Working from home–while juggling homeschooling for her three kids–and staying in touch with her teams and customers, she reminds herself to “be creative and collaborative and take each day as it comes.” 

How Scott Weathering covid crisis. Here are some of the insights and highlights from Foster’s conversation with Scott:

Be flexible

Scott learned about flexibility during the Great Recession when she realized that selling her jewelry primarily through stores owned by others wasn’t going to work for her or her long-term plan. “Every store around was closing. Nobody had a store,” she recalled.

“When the crisis hit, I had to pivot quickly. It forced me to look at my business differently,” she said. That meant opening her own brick-and-mortar shop and going direct to consumer through the web. She remembers telling her staff that this move could not fail (“I’ll have to move back in my mother,” she said with a laugh), and that it could succeed beyond their hopes. 

A decade later, Scott has 108 stores and a thriving online business. And, pre-pandemic, her company was valued at $1 billion.

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