Linda Fairchild, Design Director, joined a fast-growth jewelry manufacturer of gold and silver bridge jewelry. The company founders identified correctly that they needed to look beyond the confines of their traditonal industry to expand their product offerings and get new ideas faster to market. Arrowhead Jewelry was breaking growth records by radically re-engineering how jewelry was manufactured for the mass market, but they had a design challenge. Industry designers were not trained to think in terms of scaling and innovative engineering methods.
Linda's background was the garment industry, by its nature entrenched in speed to market and fearlessness around trying new ideas in short season, short cycles from concept through on-time delivery to retailers.
Linda applied all her skills from the garment industry and used her creative thinking to develop a weekly market testing program to test new designs from her team. She identified new market opportunities based on consumer product needs; developed a tight costing system to incorporate the fluctuating precious metals market; expanded brand awareness in the 14K gold “unbranded” business by creating award-winning jewelry packaging for department retailers in partnership with Primo Angeli Graphics.
Within 3 years the company revenue increased 300% with record-breaking profit margins annually.