I oversee sales both retail and wholesale for the brand as well as merchandising and planning. I’ve been with IPPOLITA for about ten years now, so I do a bit of everything. It's great to be involved in so many different facets of the company.

Yes, all of our jewelry is handmade and globally sourced from where the craft is done best. Thailand, Italy; we go to where the best craftsmen are. Each region does a specific craft the best. 

Our uniqueness filled a certain void in the market. In 1999, Ippolita saw super high-end jewelry, tiaras and tennis bracelets on one side, and then costume jewelry that won’t stand the test of time on the other side. It was then she recognized  there was a spot for jewelry that is made with premium quality materials that is both fun and well-crafted.

And so many of our pieces come from the female  figure. Ippolita uses a wax-to-metal process, resulting in organic and perfectly irregular shapes. It is in stark contrast to so much of the other, machine made  jewelry on the market.

Our customer is anyone looking for comfort, wearability and versatility.. We’re one of the few brands that have been successful with such a wide range of price points. We have pieces starting at $200 going all the way up to and beyond $250,000. Everyone is looking for premium materials in their jewelry, whether they are at the beach or the boardroom, in the bedroom or jet setting.

I believe we found you at NRF [National Retail Federation Conference]. We went to NRF for a couple of meetings to explore solutions that would allow us to consolidate our cumbersome systems. When we mentioned clienteling and CRM being a priority, they introduced us to [Endear's VP of Sales] Casey [Drake] who pitched us Endear.

We basically said “if you can get it to connect to our difficult system, we’re in.” I didn’t think they would be able to do it. It’s not cloud based, you need to connect via our onsite server… but they did and here we are. We fell in love with Endear, with just how easy it was.

We use it for everything. Texting, emailing; to the point where we don’t even put our individual work emails on anything anymore, it all goes to the store email that’s handled by Endear. We also use it to get a holistic view of each client - we use the Klavyio and Gorgias integrations which allow our retail teams to see each client's customer service tickets as well as marketing emails.

In our ERP setup, each customer profile can only have one email associated with it, so if someone had more than one profile, their purchases in each channel would be split. There was no consolidation. With Endear, we can see a consolidated version of their purchase history, interactions with our customer service team, and interactions with our email marketing.

So they might have purchased a year ago online, and we can now reach out to see if they would like to repurchase based on that last purchase. Endear helps our sales team to layer and stack sales like that.

It saves on wasted time. Previously, a lot of our team’s time was spent searching for information in different places. Now we turn to Endear when we want to know who hasn’t been contacted, what do I need to email to who, who has lapsed? And, since we can see all communications that go to a client we don’t risk over communicating or becoming annoying, we are just being helpful.

It’s been great! Anything we have a problem with, they handle. And I had a chat with [Endear's Co-founder] Leigh who gave me a preview of SalesChat before it came out.

For sure!