Marlyn Schiff was 24, making beaded jewelry at her kitchen table between shifts while working in the New York fashion industry, when a store owner complimented a piece she was wearing. They asked, “Have you ever thought about actually wholesaling”" Her answer was no.
Three decades later, Marlyn Schiff Jewelry sells in 2,000 stores nationwide, ships every order out of its own building, and still runs on the instinct that started it: Talk about what you love, and let people buy in. For any founder who dreads selling themselves, her path is a low-pressure alternative that actually compounds. Here, Marlyn shares how she grew a seven-figure brand one step at a time—through passion over pressure, in-house control, and a founder story she’s only now learning to lean on.
On the customer who told her to start wholesaling:
It’s very hard to admit, but yes—this all started truly by chance. I was working in the fashion industry, already making things for different designers, and on a pretty day I’d go buy beads and start making jewelry. It was very organic. I’d wear my pieces in the showroom, and stores started complimenting them. People who worked for the designers I’d been with asked if they could have things made too.
And it just sort of happened. One store said to me, “Have you ever thought about actually wholesaling?” I said, “Absolutely not.” And she said, “Well, I’d like you to make those things for me.”
I had no intention of starting a business at the time. In a lot of ways, it’s good to be young and naive. I was in Manhattan, I knew I could just wing it, and I had nothing to lose. So at 24, I went out on my own.
On why so many founders struggle to sell themselves:
Are we just born with it? I don’t know. I think I’m sort of a natural-born salesperson, and as a designer, you really have to be both. You can design, but if you can’t also sell—unless you can find people to do all of that for you so you can stay behind the scenes—it’s hard. Being able to design and sell was key for me, because I could talk about what I loved. When you’re passionate about something, people buy into it no matter what.
And it compounds. So much of it is networking. If you know people working in different industries who can help you, it comes down to constantly talking about what you do. I try to tell my children this. The more you talk about what you love doing, the more people go, “Well, I know somebody there. Let me see what I can do.”
On selling through passion instead of pressure:
I was never a sales-y person, and I don’t think I’m ever aggressive. Even now, all these years later, at the New York shows, dealing with big stores, I never push people. That’s not my style.
I just show them what I do and what I love, and then I let them follow suit with what suits them. To me, that’s the better approach, because it gives them more success too—they’re buying into my passion and the reason I designed a collection that season, the meaning behind it. Not what I’m telling them to buy.
On how a booth walk-in turned into the Neiman Marcus catalog business:
Neiman Marcus wasn’t my first retailer—at that point I was already selling to a lot of smaller stores. But they walked into my New York City booth at one of the big trade shows, which we still do, and fell in love with what they saw. The catalog business with them became massive. They picked a few styles that really hit and had to reorder them 10, 12 times over. It was this constant flow of business, and it was really great.
Part of why it worked is our price point. We pride ourselves on being the 150-and-under sort of price point, and back then Neiman’s had a whole section for that. I got lucky—that’s how I got into the stores. It’s the same thing we’re doing very well with at Nordstrom now.
On scaling from shipping boxes at night to a three-story building:
I scaled slowly, hiring people as I grew and realized I needed help. In the beginning, I was living in a little apartment in New York City, shipping boxes by myself at night. It was crazy. Then my husband got into business school in Philadelphia, we relocated, and I got a bigger apartment with a whole room dedicated to the business. I always had one person with me. Then I got an office, then a bigger office, and now we’ve just bought this not-big-but-mighty three-story building where we’re housed.
Each step of the way, as it was needed, I moved into a spot and brought in the right amount of people. Finding the right people is a struggle—it’s a lot of years, and lots of people come and go. But I’m very fortunate that some have stayed. I’ve got people in the building who’ve been with me 17, 18 years, and Nicole, my right-hand design assistant, has been with me 10 and a half years, which is unbelievable.
On turning a vintage Paris find into a bestselling collection:
I do a lot of vintage shopping, and every season I build collections around really cool vintage pieces I find. This season everybody’s seen the sardines—but ours were so different because I found this vintage piece in Paris that was all sardines. I took it apart, put the components on long beads, did it on turquoise, and created a whole story around it. When I told that story, we sold so much of it.
It’s the same with color. I knew chocolate brown was going to be hot for fall, so we did a whole smoky topaz collection and chocolate brown enamels. Then someone’s looking online and goes, “Oh—I remember her talking about chocolate brown. There it is.” It connects them to the brand. When I get on Instagram and talk about what a collection meant or why I made it, we get a lot of sales from that. Honestly, I haven’t gotten on top of that enough.
On why the founder’s story is the one thing AI can’t copy:
These are such valid points, but I haven’t been talking about it as much as I should. It’s unbelievable how much has changed in the past year. There are companies now being founded on just AI-driven images. My daughter is in the influencer marketing world—these things didn’t even exist before. It’s a whole new world.
I’ve been around so long that the real question becomes: How do you not fight it? You figure out ways to go with the flow, to remain relevant and not be angry about change. This is the way it is, so let’s work with it. But getting the message out to people, staying human, having that human element—that’s probably very, very necessary.
Hear the rest of Marlyn’s conversation on Shopify Masters, including the photo-proof system that keeps her chargebacks at zero, how designing masks kept her brand relevant through COVID, and why her all-women team turned a boutique into a community fundraising space.
