Ripka lends business advice at WJA conference
March 19, 2007
By Teresa Novellino
New York—Being persistent and surrounding yourself with positive, encouraging friends and associates can catapult your business into the big time, jewelry-design powerhouse
Judith Ripka told attendees of the Women's Jewelry Association's Women in the Know Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology on Friday.
Passion for creating jewelry can also take your business a long way, she added.
"Even if it had not become my business, I would still design jewelry," Ripka said. "Persistence is one of the keys to my success. I've sketched two days a week religiously for 34 years."
Ripka told the story of her business, the Judith Ripka Companies Inc., a multimillion-dollar wholesale and retail jewelry company that now employs 150 people (90 percent of whom are women) and is opening its 13th retail store in Las Vegas this year.
"Our inside joke is we'll only hire you if you want to wear our jewelry as much as we do," Ripka said.
But when Ripka started out, she was a struggling mother of three running her business out of the living room of her house in Long Island, where she was one of the few working mothers in her neighborhood at the time.
She balanced caring for the children with sketching during all of her free moments, initially selling jewelry out of her own living room from a $12 case she bought in the Bowery section of Manhattan.
Her business got off the ground with a $1,000 loan from a dear friend who was among those who encouraged her as she began making jewelry at a manufacturing facility in 1973, Ripka said. Other friends lent her cars to get around since she didn't own a vehicle.
"Don't have anyone around you who doesn't wish you well," Ripka said. "There were countless people along the way who told me to give up, that the chances were slim. But I am telling you, the chances are not slim."
In 1986, she redesigned a friend's pearl necklace for her by adding a gold toggle, and soon found herself with orders from others who learned about the pearl redesign by word of mouth.
With financial help from her second husband, Ripka opened her first store in Manhasset, N.Y., in 1993, taking out a full-page advertisement in
The New York Times that said "Bring us your pearls" at the top.
Now, the company is a family business, with her husband and two of her sons working there full time. The third son, a lawyer, sits on the company board.
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