Simone Kendle: CEO of Wove

Episode 675

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I’m joined by Simone Kendle, CEO of Wove, the custom jewelry brand changing the way people experience luxury. With a mission to bring personalization and storytelling to the forefront of fine jewelry, Wove is helping customers design one-of-a-kind pieces that truly mean something.
Simone shares her journey to leading Wove, what sets the brand apart in a traditional industry, and how she’s scaling a modern company rooted in authenticity, innovation, and purpose. We also talk about what it takes to grow fast, stay mission-aligned, and connect deeply with today’s consumers.
If you’re curious about building a standout brand, redefining luxury, or leading with intention—this one’s for you. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super, super excited to have my next guest here. We’re joined by Simone Kendall, who is the powerhouse CEO of an incredible company that you may have heard of, and if you haven’t heard of it, then you definitely will. It’s a company called Wove, and Wove spelled W, O, v, e, and it’s a custom jewelry brand shaking up the 340 plus billion dollar global jewelry industry with innovation, purpose and personalization. And Simone is not the founder, but stepped in to the CEO role at Wove in 2023 and has already made incredible waves and progress driving triple digit growth and transforming how people experience modern luxury. We’re going to get into her background. How did all of this come about that she ended up coming in to this incredible, incredible mission driven company. And you may have also heard Wove connected with a celebrity that many people, including myself, absolutely adore. So I cannot wait to hear that story too, and and overall, what’s happening with Wove, what is she dealing with on a day to day basis as she continues to grow the company and all of that? So Simone, welcome to the show. So nice to meet you. Yes, same

Simone Kendle 2:13
here. Thank you so much for having me absolutely well Wove. I

Kara Goldin 2:17
have a beautiful little ring here from Wove that I absolutely love, love, love. So I’d love to hear, first of all, you describe what is Wove, and how are you flipping the traditional jewelry industry on its head?

Simone Kendle 2:33
Yeah, absolutely Wove is an online custom jeweler. We make meaningful pieces to relate to any of your most meaningful moments in life. So we started out with bridal we started out with creating custom engagement rings for our clients. And our innovative approach was we would create an exact replica ring of your rate of your design, so you could try that ring on at home before you bought it. So if many of us out there have ever bought an engagement ring, it’s very scary to buy that setter diamond. All this sudden, your partner in life is, if you want it to be a surprise for her, is no longer in the in the weeds with you on something. And so we’ve created a really cool, really seamless way where you can work with a designer virtually, but then be able to try on that ring before you make that big purchase. This allows you to propose with that replica ring. Allow the wearer to add in her two cents on design. Maybe she doesn’t totally love a marquee diamond, and now we want to go in oval. You’ve got all that optionality when you go through woves replica process for bridal. But like you mentioned, we had a little bit of a viral moment with one of our favorite celebs, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, where Taylor wore one of our custom friendship bracelet that was made in diamonds and gold, and that really showcased how our platform can be used in not only just bridal but also other custom jewelry moments. So highlighting a win at work, a moment with your girlfriend or boyfriend, with your sisters, with your mom. And so what I’ve been thinking through a lot as I’ve taken on this role is, how can we just bring that platform to every meaningful moment in our lives that diamonds and gold can be a part of. I

Kara Goldin 4:05
love it. How did that Taylor Swift moment come about? Oh, gosh,

Simone Kendle 4:10
a lot of luck and good connection. So we had launched a collection with pro golfer Michelle. We West in late 2023 so she believed in woe very early on. At that time, she joined as a partner equity holder, and really helped us think through what custom jewelry could look like, our first influence, or partnership, if you will, but really thinking through what would be some cultural inspired, trendy jewelry that we could create. And so she thought, hey, I love friendship bracelets. I think they’re the ultimate sort of representation of love in our lives. That’s not solely just for moms or just for people, but really sort of universal. Then she was, you know, like, you know what, let’s just up it a little bit. And so Michelle came up with that. And she had golfed with Travis Kelce in the past, and so at this time. Time Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift were kind of new. I mean, we hadn’t really seen them publicly together much. This was only maybe three to six months into their relationship, at least the part that we know of. And so at Christmas time 2023 I was sitting with Michelle. We were thinking about how to really get this collection out there. And she said, hey, you know, maybe I can ask Travis if she if he’d want to gift one to Taylor. She’s the muse of friendship bracelets. And we said, Heck, yeah, let’s try. And as most of us know, gifting to celebrities is not a guarantee by any means or stretch of the word. You never know what’s gonna happen. And for me, as a new CEO, I’d only been at the brand for three months, so it was a pretty large risk to take to deliver 1000s of dollars worth of inventory in a matter of days. Our team was stretched to do it, but I knew when I came into the brand that the biggest problem with wealth at the time was no one knew we existed. We got a great product, great team, but no one knew we existed, and so we needed that amplification moment, and so I said, You know what? Clutch my pearls. Let’s take the risk. And we did. Delivered the bracelets to Chief stadium by Christmas, and then we waited, and we didn’t hear anything for months or no, probably wasn’t, probably a month and some change, until January 28 when she wore that bracelet to the AFC Championship game. And from there, everyone knew about TNT. From there, everybody knew about Wove and we’ve just been on a literal ride ever

Kara Goldin 6:31
since. I love it well, I love the connection with investors, because I I think many of our investors, and some of them are celebrities, but some of them are not celebrities, and have been able to make these great connections that make, you know, a ton of sense for the brand, and have really people do notice it, right? And I think it’s a small if you know, just the ask of asking some of your investors, you know that maybe they know how to connect you with certain people, or even events like, I’ve just found that supporting many of their events and things like that, like doing a raffle, or, you know, maybe they’re part of, you know, the Heart Association or Cancer Association, or whatever, like doing things like that. It really goes a long way.

Simone Kendle 7:25
Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree. I think that was how we were able to get that foothold into that Taylor Swift and Travis moment. It wasn’t just about, you know, Michelle posting about her collection and being supportive there. I mean, she represents what a partnership can look like both externally and internally. She’s leveraging her voice on her socials and connecting with people, but she’s always thinking about what way we can get Wove in the fold. So we are gifting at golf tournaments. We are a part of her golf tournaments. The winner gets one of the bracelets, right? But really thinking authentically about how we can connect and then investors broadly, I completely agree us tapping into our investors networks in terms of partnerships events. That’s where you start to really get that value beyond the capital is when you just have to say, hey, I need help with X, Y, Z, be really deliberate about that, and don’t hold back. That’s one of the biggest things I’ve really leaned into coming into this role. I had to achieve a lot in a very small amount of time. So I had to be unapologetic about what I knew what I didn’t know. So I was always asking, Who do you know? Who can I meet? And that’s really helped us move as quickly as we have in the last 18 months since I’ve been here.

Kara Goldin 8:37
I love it. So everyone talks about personalization, but you’re living it. Why is it kind of the thing right now that matters so much, especially in in the whole luxury movement, it’s not just about having, you know, a brand, it’s also about having that unique item. And what have you seen since, since you’ve been running Wove, yeah,

Simone Kendle 9:02
I mean, customization is everything. I think we are inundated with choice right through our ability to shop online. We’re not just walking in a store and sort of seeing a curated selection. We can literally get anything we want. And so then it’s like, well, if I have this inundation of choice, then it’s about who, who am I buying from? Why am I buying from them? And what is it representing in my life? It’s not just enough to say, hey, I have a $10,000 budget. Let me choose from three things. Really, our generation is saying we are discerning. We care about the details. We want to know that our person is a part of these very large investments, these large purchases, right? And so yes, we could align ourselves with a large purchase for a brand, right, like those heritage brands, the Tiffany and koa Cartier, and that represents one thing. But I have seen millennials, and especially Gen Z, going away from this. They don’t necessarily want to represent themselves as a part of a larger brand. They want to represent themselves the. Visuality, the real life experiences that they’ve gone through. And so now we’re bridging that gap. We’re saying, Okay, we want to create things that mean something to us, that speak to our stories, but we also want it to be something that’s generational, right, that does last the test of time, that is quality driven. And so I think there’s a lot of those different things layering in, but I think it fundamentally comes with our generation is just super discerning. We can spot an ad from a mile away. There’s so much choice on the social platforms, on search, that you’ve got to start really thinking about what matters in people’s lives and connecting emotionally to drive that final purchase. And that that’s what we do every day.

Kara Goldin 10:38
So before we get into kind of the storytelling and some of the other unique elements of Wove, I’d love to hear. So how did you hop into this CEO role? You were not the founder, but can you share that story? Yeah, so

Simone Kendle 10:55
it kind of goes back to business school. So I went to Wharton for my business school experience, and it was awesome. It was very filled with networking. We’re in sort of a place where, yes, you go to class, but it is very heavily scoped around that networking experience, whether you’re serving on boards with people, we were pushed heavily to work with others in startups and thinking about ideas and getting stuff off the ground. So one of those many i i at business school. I think I was a part of like, three or four different startups. I was co founder here, co founder there, trying to find my thing. I was really excited about leaning into entrepreneurship. After spending basically my whole career in corporate, it was now my time to find that, that itch. And so one of those co founders that I had worked with my first year in business school, gave me a call about two and a half years out out of business school, and he had invested in Wove through his through his fund, and Wove was in a place where they were founded by two Army veterans, phenomenal guys, one of which had his family, had generations of jewelers, had a jewelry store in Lancaster. So he grew up in the jewelry, jewelry world, but then he went to the military, right? And so he was really an operations guy, and his co founder also, similarly, was went to West Point, went into the military, and he wanted to lean heavily into SAS, and that’s where you sort of get this mix of, sort of the artisanal and the technology. But the key they were really missing was marketing and really building a consumer brand, online, digitally native. They had great margins, they had great supply chain, but gosh, no one knew they existed. And I think, you know, at that time, they realized they needed someone who understood marketing in this age, also marketing at the seed stage. It’s very different to market in a corporation, to market as a bootstrapped founder, to marketing at a high growth venture backed, you know, startup, and so at my where I was at previously to Wove was, I was a co founder and CMO at another venture backed startup called parfait. We were doing customization with wigs. We were using AI and computer vision to customize wigs virtually. And so, because I had a very similar supply chain, we were doing custom at scale. We were doing global buying. We were doing glass assembly in the United States. We were building a digitally native brand. I had a lot of the experience levels that Wove needed, but also had some similarities in terms of business model, and understood that there’s sort of a mix of truly, truly, truly bespoke, and then there’s a bit of sort of bespoke with barriers online, and then all the things in between to really speak to that end consumer, which is really at the end of the day, they don’t care about the frills, they care about what they want in their piece. So I went from doing that for wigs to doing that for rings, and it has really translated very well. But, you know, with that heavily lean on now, what does custom jewelry look like for the brand? What do strategic partnerships look like for the brand? Because we were at that point where ads could only get us so far. We had to start making moments in the market, and that’s where those partnerships really started to help us get our foot off the ground. It’s,

Kara Goldin 14:06
it’s so, so true. So what a fun job, though, what a great opportunity, especially, to have sort of the bones there. I mean, it’s a little scary, right? And to some extent, you’re, you’re taking someone else’s vision and really putting the icing on and making it happen. So what’s been the most surprising aspect of that for you jumping into this role?

Simone Kendle 14:32
Yeah, I mean, I think, like you mentioned, you walk in and there’s sort of bones there and there’s a vision there, but you have to make your vision align and get it to the next level. And there’s a lot of uncharted territory with that. There’s also sort of the baggage of what worked what didn’t work. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised that for the most part, we’ve all been aligned, the founders and I have been aligned on where we think woes should go. But I think the surprising most. Moment of seeing how much custom jewelry really has shifted. Our ability to market our business is still predominantly bridal. That is still what people come to us for. But when we think about how you meet us in the market, we’re thinking about, how do we talk to the 95% of people who are not in market for bridal during the time? So then when they are, we’re ready for them, and I think that was the difference. I thought I would still be marketing towards bridal more and more. But what I found is what works for us is we do bridal lower funnel. We sort of nurture over time, but we get folks on the upper funnel with custom jewelry and really nurturing those telling those stories. And that’s been super sticky, but definitely a skew away from, I think, what the original founders would have thought, and so I’ve been able to blend them together, but that’s definitely been an interesting surprise for me. And then I think overall, what I’m still sort of managing is blending those messages together eloquently and at seed stage right, like we don’t have another $100,000 for brand, right, re, messaging and things, and so I think kind of holding those things all at the same time is still tough. But you know, at the end of the day, I feel very, very much conviction in the vision I have. And so even with the small surprises on how we get there, when, when things happen, when things don’t happen, we make it through because, because of those good bones that the founders set, I can kind of, you know, play around and test some things, because we really had a great foundation coming in.

Kara Goldin 16:30
So you talk about, definitely the bridal aspect, but you want to keep that consumer coming back for more, and you’ve done some different partnerships that I love, beyond kind of the PR partnerships, like you had talked about the Taylor Swift experience, you also have collections that are getting created. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you think that that fits into an overall strategy?

Simone Kendle 17:00
Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about collections, we think about them as very specific storylines. And so my goal is, with each collection, we’re speaking to a target demo, a target group of people. So for instance, we had a collection with Rachel Lindsay, the first African American Bachelorette, while obviously we fell in love with her on The Bachelorette. She also, in this past year, has been going through a divorce, and that’s a very distinct experience that a lot of people go through. And as a bridal brand, obviously we’re leaning into that first proposal, but as a woman myself, and thinking about, you know, being engaged and not being engaged, and like all the different sort of twists and turns life can take us on I wanted to be able to tell stories that highlighted the strength that comes from that, the resilience that comes from that. And so Rachel’s story was able to really blossom out this thoughtful, sort of connected collection that really meant more than just getting engaged. It’s talking about life. It’s talking about, you know, things do go right, and some of things go wrong, but we learn and we grow and we get through it. And so I was really excited to have something a bit more passion for emotion, but slightly different. We’re still celebrating, but it’s a bit of a different type of celebration. So her collection, I think, was a good example of us sort of showcasing other things that happen in our lives that we can choose to celebrate and choose to grow from, and it also had an element of a charitable component. So one of the pieces that we developed with her, we also were donating a certain amount of proceeds to a charity of her choice, and that really spoke to her connection to the legal arm. She wanted to give funds to an organization that would support it’s called her justice, and that organization highlights and gives women who are struggling with domestic violence issue, child custody issues, what have you, the dollars they need to fight the cases that they’re in. And so that’s what we really love to do. We love to speak to that very specific storyline that connects in an authentic way. But then, if we can do some good with selling of jewelry, we’re going to do it every time.

Kara Goldin 19:06
What is your best selling product right now? Oh, gosh. I mean, other

Simone Kendle 19:10
than an engagement ring, definitely it’s it’s still, believe it or not, still the TNT bracelet, that custom diamond friendship bracelet, it is so interesting that collection is one that obviously it’s been out there for a little while, and we keep it there because every single one has a different story. So every time someone approaches it, they’re putting their husband and their their themselves, you know, anniversary date on it. They’re doing their sisters. You know, Michelle specifically, she has one for her daughter, one for her son, one for her and her husband. And so we’re seeing folks come back and stack them. And so I think that is truly the beauty of custom fine jewelry, is you can tell different stories with each piece. Grow it over time, um, decide that certain pieces are going to stay with you, some pieces you might pass along to your daughter. Um. Like, I have a very specific bracelet that my seven year old daughter, when she was six years old, hand wrote something, and that’s engraved in that bracelet, so a little two Kara, half diamond, half tennis bracelet to half paperclip, half tennis bracelet. And I know when she turned 16, that’s getting rolled to her, and then I’ll upgrade my bracelet to something else. And so I just love this idea of we can have different pieces that tell different stories. So yes, you buy them for a special occasion, for a meaningful moment, but then it tells your story over time, which is really cool.

Kara Goldin 20:32
I love it. So when, when you think back on the, you know, 18 months ago, I guess when, when you joined. It’s a little more than that, right? Is it? Yes, yeah, I think we’re

Simone Kendle 20:45
Yeah, it’s April. We’re already in q2 while yeah, we’re there. October 2023,

Kara Goldin 20:52
so the world has changed significantly, and especially as you think about selling product. You know you’re you’re an online business, and being able to ship internationally has always been part of woves specialty. But what is one kind of brutal lesson that you’ve had to learn the hard way, as as you’ve been continuing to operate the company. Yeah.

Simone Kendle 21:26
I mean, I two things come to mind. One is rapidly having to scale. When everything’s going right. I think we all talk about when things break and it’s like a bad thing, everything’s going right in our business, and things broke, and how we’re trying to manage that, while also keeping the team’s morale up and getting things sort of pushing through on manufacturing. That was really tough. That was the first time I was super happy and also very, very stressed at the same time. But then I think the other piece of that is understanding the dynamics that are changing around us. There’s a lot that we can control, and there’s a ton that we cannot control. As an online business, if you think about how often platforms change, you know, Shopify, changes meta ads, changes an algorithm, so much of that impacts our ability to operate, our ability to gain the margin that we need to survive to keep going. And so, you know, something that happened recently was when the tariffs were introduced in Canada, we are growing business into the Canadian market. We’re super excited to have quite a few folks from Toronto and Ontario coming to us, because we’re virtual, and so we’re able to help them. But the day that the tariffs launched on Canada. We were delivering a ring, fully purchased ring, to our Canadian client, and he was hit with a $9,000 essentially duties to get to be paid. So he hits us up at what 10am that morning, saying, hey, maybe something’s wrong. And we’re like, yeah, that that can’t be right. 9000 that’s crazy, but come to find out, that day, so his item was being delivered that day, and he got that duties completely shifted the amount of money, you know, he’d already been, already been committed to a $16,000 ring, and now he’s got another almost $10,000 to pay. And so for us, that’s, that’s tough, right? Because we’ve done our part. You know, for a lot of online retailers, the moment you put that shipping label on, it gets picked up by UPS. You don’t have any any say or do. And that one was tough, because for us, then we said, well, what is the right thing to do? Is the right thing to do? Help him with that? Is it to there? It was really difficult. And I think overall, what we recognized was, while we can control what we do on the business end, so making sure we’re super clear about tariffs and sort of price impact if we’re shipping overseas, we’re also being thoughtful of, you know, maybe not advertising to Canada right now, recognizing that we might actually be pricing ourselves out of that client market until things kind of subside. So, you know, I think that was a big one in the last few weeks, where we just have realized, you know, where we we want to serve everyone, but there’s also some constraints that we want to be thoughtful of as we enter new markets and expand over time. So we’ll, I’m sure we’ll keep finding those. But, yeah, it’s been an interesting, interesting 18 and some change months. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 24:20
yeah, definitely. So what are you personally so obsessed with about the company? Maybe something that that you don’t necessarily get credit for? Maybe credit is the wrong word, but you you are so proud of what you’ve been able to achieve inside of the company. But oftentimes those kind of, those hard things, especially in the back end or the operations or whatever, are not the things that the consumer sees or, I mean, they just want it to work right, and they want to get their engagement ring and all of those things. But what are the things that. You’ve just been obsessed with inside of Wove, that you’re just to give people a flavor for what is your life like as a CEO.

Simone Kendle 25:09
Gosh, the people are incredible. And I’m not just saying that I joined a new industry. I joined a new team. They had been founder led until I joined and so there’s culture there that’s built up. I’m coming in as a new person wanting to change a lot of things. And those folks there not only had the deep expertise, they had the humbleness to work with me, but also they’ve had my back from from through all the things they’ve given me grace, they’ve also taught me so much. And then they treat each other with the utmost respect. One of the things that can happen in startup land is you can get really short with someone and not realize that you’re you might be offending them, or maybe you say something and it’s taken out of context, especially when you have a remote team. We have some folks in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but we also have people in Florida, Georgia, New York, I’m in Texas, and so there’s a lot of social capital that could be missed, especially when you are now all of a sudden, everybody’s stressed, everybody’s running a mile a minute. And I think you know, the teams, camaraderie and their ability to communicate together, their ability to give each other grace, give me grace, speaks volumes. That’s how we can solve the problems pretty quickly. There’s no blaming culture. There’s no so and so missed this email, and therefore it’s just, Hey, how can I help? I’ve got, I’ve got designers every day who I’ve, you know, I’m hosting events for the brand, or or what have you, and they’re like, What can I do to help? Can I take pictures? Can I, can I tell my friends, you know, can I post on social and so I think that’s one of the things that, you know, the world doesn’t get to see, but they see the fruit of that. They see the collaborations. They see the heights we’re hitting in terms of revenue, and we’re moving more efficiently than we’ve ever before. And if you look on our reviews on Google, five star reviews, they don’t talk about, oh, I got a beautiful ring. They talk about how great it was to work with MC, one of our designers, how great it was to work with Jesse, one of our designers. So people is such a big deal for us, but it is, is so deep, much deeper than just being nice to clients. We’re nice to each other.

Kara Goldin 27:16
Yeah, I love it. I love it. So last question. Fast forward five years. What does Wove look like? If everything goes right?

Simone Kendle 27:27
Oh my gosh, Wove five years from now, honestly, Wove is either a part of a very large distribution network, like a signet, where we are one of the amazing brands there. Our goal is to either get acquired, to catapult us into better distribution and better access to manufacturing and all the things, or we go gobble up other people until we’re ready to be bought. And so I’m thinking, you know, Wove today has bridal and we do women’s jewelry really well. I want to get a men’s jewelry line out there. I want to get watches in there. I really want to build on top of this bespoke feeling, but really making sure that we’re staying aligned with precious metal fine jewelry, but really thinking about, how does our client change over time? What are they interested in five to 10 years from now? And making sure we’re building brand and access to to those pieces. So that might be way of acquiring. We might go ahead and buy a factory somewhere, but either, either path is very much a multi million dollar acquisition, all the things for for the brand, for sure,

Kara Goldin 28:35
I love it so Simone, thank you so much for coming on. Love, love, love Wove, everyone needs to check it out, and you were doing such an amazing job. I’m so excited to see and watch you as you continue to grow. So thank you, and thank you everyone for listening. Simone, Kendall, CEO of Wove, thank you. Thank you, Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you, too, so feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and Building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now you.

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