Jennifer Fisher’s new Beverly Hills store is mere steps from Erewhon, the trendy organic grocer famous for its celebrity-crafted smoothies. That was intentional, says Fisher, who launched her namesake brand in 2005 with a small collection of jewelry. “That’s where everyone is. It’s strategic.” The store, clad in marble and moodily lit, opens today.
It’s the third store in Fisher’s fleet, following a New York location on Madison Avenue that opened in September. Inside, customers can find Fisher’s famous hoops and her signature puffy heart collection, alongside fine jewelry pieces that retail for up to $35,000.
There’s also space dedicated to salt. In 2017, Fisher started selling her own salt blend, called universal salt, and the line has grown to include spicy salt, curry salt and everything salt, packaged with Jennifer Fisher branding. She’s also written a cookbook, called Trust Your Gut, and bottled up and sold her signature scent, a blend she says smells like coconut cookies. There’s more in the pipeline: she’s working on an eyewear line, and recently launched a cotton beanie. Denim will come later this year, and she’s also launching a men’s line of jewelry in sterling silver, which she thinks will have crossover appeal with her female customers.
Crossover appeal is part of Fisher’s store opening strategy. After hosting a party on Tuesday night with the LA social scene, the designer will appear on Martha Stewart’s podcast to discuss her cooking journey and business learnings.
All this, combined with Fisher’s own status as a Shopmy influencer, where she links outfits and other favorite products, brand deals with companies like Lalo Tequila, and her new site for all things lifestyle and cooking, called Maedyn, has affixed Fisher at the top of a modern lifestyle business.
It’s the type of business model usually reserved for celebrities, which Fisher is not, at least in the traditional sense. She started her career in magazines before pivoting into styling, working on TV and commercial sets. The discovery of a desmoid tumor thrust her into the world of wellness regimens and treatments, and the journey to having her son — whom she called the “million dollar baby” thanks to a fertility and surrogacy experience that ended in a natural pregnancy — inspired the first piece she ever designed: a dog tag necklace with her son’s name on it. From there, she developed her first collection and went on to become a finalist for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award in 2012. She thinks of this period as “Jennifer Fisher 1.0”.
The second phase of the business began during Covid, when she started posting videos of herself on social media, mostly cooking and sharing recipes, and grew her following online — opening doors to the additional categories, collaborations and brand deals that would come.
“I’m using my food platform to acquire customers and cross-pollinate on social,” Fisher says. “You don’t have to stay in your lane — it’s more important now to go to every party, take every meeting. Relationships are everything. That’s something people forget about as your business gets bigger.”
Being a lifestyle brand once meant something very different. Designer names like Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger popped up on towels and children’s clothes, letting the brand infiltrate different life stages and cycles for more consumers. More recently, a jewelry brand might dip into other accessories in its orbit, like handbags or shoes, to test out the lifestyle model. That’s not what Fisher wanted to do. “My business intuition kicked in,” says Fisher, of deciding to launch her salt. “I thought, ‘I can sell this, it feels more natural.’ I always said I wanted to do it differently.”
Fisher’s own role in her brand’s growth is indicative of a post-influencer era where creators cross over into brand founders. “The strategy was that I started showing more of myself. I saw the traction of what that could do.” More affiliate platforms are now positioning themselves as the place to turn influencers into mini retailers, where they can get more people to buy their recommendations without relying on Instagram to facilitate the purchase. Fisher’s business on Shopmy guides her brand’s development: as she saw the many sunglasses she wears sell through her Shopmy storefront, she gathered data on what types of eyewear performed well, planning her own launch into the category.
The Jennifer Fisher business is a case study in what it takes to survive today in a difficult climate for small to mid-sized brands. Her playbook has been to create an ecosystem of seemingly unconnected categories that she invests in based on what’s resonating in her life, as she sees that resonance reflected back to her on social media. Her line is carried by 35 stockists, from traditional wholesale retailers to online marketplaces and newer accounts, like hotel boutiques, but DTC sales are the main focus.
She also had to decide when to give up sole ownership. Two years ago, she entered a joint venture with Centric Brands, which also owns LA label Favorite Daughter, thanks to their global jewelry supply chain, becoming chief brand officer overseeing product development and design. She says sales are up 30% from last year, and that the brand is forecasting 3.5x growth by 2028.
To get there, in addition to the category expansion, she says she’s now refocusing on fine jewelry, while paying attention to price point and what customers say they can afford. A hollow version of her 18-karat gold chain will sell at a lower cost, which she says was in response to the economic backdrop. She doesn’t want to price her customers out of her brand. She also doesn’t want to be typecast, either: a New York Times write-up called her the “Queen of Hoops”. “We got pigeonholed. My business started in fine jewelry.” She also plans to clean up her wholesale accounts this year, setting minimum order values per retailer, which will weed out some smaller buys.
“You have to be nimble. It’s harder now that we’re part of a $3 billion company. But it’s about having systems set in place, making sure your margins are correct — all that for brand survival,” Fisher says. “Every day is hard.”
