Want to start your own successful business? Maybe you should take your daughter out for an after-school mother-daughter date.
That’s what Elise Zall did. More than two decades later, the business born of a mother trying to boost her daughter’s spirits continues to flourish.
When her oldest child came home from school after a bad day, Elise suggested spending the afternoon at a shop where you could make your own beaded jewelry. In solidarity with her daughter, Elise made a necklace also.
When she wore the necklace on a trip to Florida, the rest was history.
“One of my friends commented about the jewelry I was wearing, and I said, ‘Well, I made it!’” Elise recalls. “She asked if I would consider selling it. I sold it right off my neck, and she became my first customer.”
With that, Elise launched her jewelry design business, truly as a one-person operation. She is the maker, the model, and the marketer of pieces you will see worn by women at many JEWISHcolorado events. Now, in a post-COVID world, she is looking for new ways to spread her philosophy—“Accessorizing is a wonderful thing!”
The unintentional entrepreneur
It wasn’t completely outlandish to think that Elise had a talent for design. She had been an art major in college, but her career had taken her to the less artistic worlds of banking and biotech. Still, she was the mother in the class who was a “maker.” She loved it when her children brought home assignments that called for creativity and crafts.
When her first necklace sold, she made a couple more, wore them in public, and they sold immediately. She noticed there were vendors selling their wares at Club Greenwood and decided “If they can do it, why can’t I?” Club Greenwood success led her to more sales opportunities at a variety of shows—in people’s homes and in stores.
The very small business continued to grow. One of her big breaks came on a trip with 40 women in Israel sponsored by the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado (now JEWISHcolorado.) Elise packed a lot of jewelry for the trip because, she says, “You never know when opportunity will present itself.” Every day on the trip, she wore a different necklace until a woman from Aspen asked her, “Where are you getting all this great jewelry?”
“I make it and sell it,” Elise replied.
“Let’s do a show out of our hotel room,” suggested Melinda Goldrich, Elise’s new Aspen friend.
The connection with Goldrich opened doors for more shows in Aspen. She also started designing necklaces that women could use to wear their Lion of Judah pin. When her husband Stuart Zall, incoming Chair of the JEWISHcolorado Real Estate & Construction Network, went to real estate conventions in Las Vegas, she went along and set up shop out of her hotel room.
She had become, unintentionally, an entrepreneur.
“I never think of it that way,” she says. “But I guess I am.”
When business is personal
At the same time Elise was growing the business, she was raising three growing children. She started creating the jewelry in the basement, but her children’s friends would play with her work, so she “pushed Stuart out of his home office and it’s been my studio ever since.”
She raised the children during the day and stayed up late making jewelry at night.
“It was just pure satisfaction because people loved my stuff,” she says. “I had always wanted to find something I’m really good at and that was it.”
The seized office notwithstanding, Stuart became Elise’s literal wingman in the business.
“On airplanes, Stuart takes my jewelry out and sells it!” Elise says with a laugh. “He is my biggest promoter and salesman.”
It’s an oft-repeated saying: “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” But for Elise, the business is personal. She loves the people she has met through the years selling jewelry and calls them “wonderful friends.” She designed all the necklaces for the bridal party at her son’s wedding and also made a necklace for the bride’s mother and a bracelet for the bride. Making jewelry and seeing her art worn by women around her gives her joy.
Whenever the prospect of taking the business to a higher level presented itself, she hesitated, fearful that it would no longer be fun. But before she could even make that move, the pandemic altered the business for her.
Life is more interesting with jewelry
When the world shut down during COVID-19, Elise’s person-to-person model of selling jewelry shut down with it. She took initial steps to creating an online social media presence and found that Instagram was a good outlet. But she says, “The world changed during COVID.”
“People realized they didn’t have to get dressed up,” she says. “Wearing jewelry just didn’t seem that important. And even when COVID was over, it stayed that way.”
Nonetheless, at events around Colorado, she still runs into women wearing her pieces, some of which date back many years.
“It’s crazy in a way because I have been doing this for so long—24 years now,” she says. “But it’s wonderful to see people wearing things and knowing that they still love it.”
Like her very first sale in Florida, she still sells off her own neck. She will wear a favorite piece for months—and then Stuart notices that it has vanished.
“Stuart calls these pieces my ‘govindas,’” Elise says. “He will say, ‘Oh, you sold your ‘govinda.’ They are one-of-a-kind pieces that will never be made again.”
She remains an unapologetic promoter of jewelry for women.
“I have always loved jewelry,” she says. “It enhances your outfit, it enhances your personality—life is more interesting with jewelry.”