Entrepreneur of the Week: Amelia Deren

Congratulations to our No Limits Entrepreneur of the Week, Amelia Deren!

Name + Title: Amelia Deren, CEO & Founder of Amelia Rose Designs, Inc.

Home: Hopkinton, Massachusetts

Bio: I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut and attended Trinity College in Hartford. My first job and “real” corporate experience was at State Street Bank in Boston; thereafter I earned my JD at Suffolk University Law School. Amelia Rose was incorporated in 2007, my two children Henry and Sadie joined the picture, and forever changed life for the better, in 2010 and 2014 respectively.

Why did you start your own business? My first business was actually in high school, chocolate-covered fruit platters with my close girlfriend and teenage partner-in-crime, Dana Gunders; so it’s safe to say the entrepreneurial spirit was already in me from a young age. Having watched my older brother purchase and then successfully manage and grow Camp Manitiou also inspired me to go into business. As for Amelia Rose, at the time I was about to officially launch it I was corporate counsel for a national and international engineering consulting firm. My days were filled with what felt like non-stop 50+ page contracts and what also felt like non-stop negotiation with other attorneys, or as I like to call it “professional arguing.” The intense and at times unpleasant legal work environment lead to day dreams of taking all that time, effort and energy and funneling it into something I actually did enjoy and could see the fruits of my labor develop from. With jewelry design there’s the immediate aesthetic component, the gratification of illustrating an idea into something tangible. To then monetize and scale that creative component into a self-supporting and eventually financially successful company is nothing short of exhilarating.

What did you have in place when you made the leap and quit your job? I had a skeleton of a business plan in place, one main supplier, and a long list of jewelry designers I contacted for help, but whom I found didn’t want to divulge too much helpful information. Over the years I’ve come to learn and realize the barriers to entry in jewelry design are so low and success in this industry is so rare and therefore competitive, that collaboration and sharing of resources is greatly limited.

How are you financing your business? I’ve been extremely fortunate to have financed my business organically through its natural growth over the years, but in 2007 when I did launch I did so with $40k of my own savings. We now have business lines of credit with suppliers which is especially helpful when going to production on large orders for customers with whom we’ve extended payment terms.

Name one business obstacle and how you’ve overcome it: Managing logistics and shipping. Once we reached the point of having too much business to handle in-house the decision had to be made if expansion and investment was ideal or outsourcing. This could change going forward, but all became more streamlined and allowed for more focus on sales when we outsourced shipping and logistics. Orders come in and we physically don’t see or touch them unless intervention is needed; this allows my staff and myself to remain focused on design, marketing and supplier relationships.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself at the start of your new venture? Hire an assistant and don’t think twice. When you start you are inevitably the chief cook and bottle washer; similar to having a baby and becoming a first-time parent. You have no idea what you are doing and trying to do it all yourself leads to exhaustion and a lot of tire spinning. So, looking back at myself when I just launched and was physically doing it all having hired help to do tasks that are easy to delegate/hard to fail (research suppliers, call local stores, arrange trunk shows, assist in some manufacturing), would have freed myself up more to focus on the parts of the business that I should be more involved in for long term growth like design, supplier relations, and focusing on overall strategic direction of the company.