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Guest: Victoria Wieck of Million Dollar Hobbies.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
How Product Founders Create a Breakthrough Launch
Victoria Wieck explains how an invention or hobby can become a major consumer brand through customer connection, strong presentation, persistence, and scale. You will also hear practical guidance on launch strategy, product storytelling, television and digital sales, retail, partnerships, funding, and scaling.
Episode transcript
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Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from the founder of a half a billion dollar jewelry empire on how to turn your product hobby into a multi-million dollar product business.
Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product developers,
Narrator: and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to getting your product on store shelves.
Narrator: you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses. Now, onto the show.
Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Victoria Wieck to the show. She started from nothing and grew her jewelry business to over $500 million in sales. She has over 30 years of experience in retail sales and 20 years in selling on TV.
Kevin Mako: She was a weekly host on the HSN Network and QVC for many years, and now a monthly host on the Shop HQ TV show.
Kevin Mako: She's also the host of the Million Dollar Hobbies podcast. Today, Victoria is going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can turn their hobbies or inventions into multi -million dollar international businesses.
Kevin Mako: Best practices with coming up with your innovations, getting them to market, scale them into becoming a brand, and then conquering that market. Now, on to the show.
Kevin Mako: Hey, Victoria, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thank you for having me. Excited that you're on. I understand that you're a couple of months away.
Victoria Wieck: I guess your daughter is about to have a child. You're struggling with what to name yourself. Exactly. I would, you know, I would ask everybody who's gone through this, you know, the first grandchild.
Victoria Wieck: I'm excited about being a grandmother, but I don't want to be, because it just sounds so old, you know. So I just kind of need some name to get sort of ease into that.
Kevin Mako: Because by the time the second kid comes in, you know, it's going to be grandmother for sure. and I'll be older. So anyway. Yeah, I just went through that with, you know, my parents and my in-laws and all that. And you know what? They bit the bullet. They're their
Kevin Mako: grandpa and grandma on both sides now. But they were definitely struggling with that for a bit as I was the first one, my wife and I and both sides of the family to
Kevin Mako: have a kiddo who's nine months now. Victoria, very excited to talk to you today. Why don't you just give everybody a bit of a background of your extensive 30 plus years in retail?
Victoria Wieck: Yeah. So I grew up in South Korea.
Victoria Wieck: and came to America, you know, my father had a dream that this was the promised lands we got here. You know, we struggled a lot, but, and, you know, it just, I'm going to tell you a little bit about why that's important. He, we struggled a lot, but, you know, we didn't have any money.
Victoria Wieck: But as I grew older, got myself hypereducated, you know, did all the right things supposedly to get job security. I did have job security, but I really was suffocating. I didn't really love
Victoria Wieck: dream because that's why he brought me here and took a leap of fate and started my own jewelry company with absolutely no money. Literally, I had no money. And it is an industry that's notorious
Victoria Wieck: for requiring a lot of money to start. So a lot of naysayers and, you know, people, a lot of people told me you were just going to fail or when you fail, you know, come talk to me. I'll give you a job
Victoria Wieck: kind of thing. But I didn't give up my hope, and I stuck with it, and I grew it to a million dollars, 10 million, and eventually my career total is well over $500 million.
Victoria Wieck: And when I look back
Victoria Wieck: through the whole journey, I just feel like I didn't do anything really extraordinary. It's just hard work and just having that passions. When you have so much passion and you know everything about something,
Victoria Wieck: you get better at it than everybody else. And you have a pulse on what's going on. And so that's the whole story. And the only other thing I'll tell you is I did business in the
Victoria Wieck: course of that all over the world. You know, my products were sold at Herod's London, galleries at fiat and France, Takashmaya, and Japan, all over the United States, you know,
Victoria Wieck: Sachs, Neiman, you name it, everyone. And then ultimately, I ended up on HSN for 20 years with my show.
Kevin Mako: and now I'm on Shop HQ monthly, and that's basically a two-minute speech about me. What an incredible story. And I'm really excited to unpack that, because today's topic is how can folks,
Kevin Mako: they were just like you, either hobby inventors or maybe somebody with a small hobby project, maybe you're selling a few parts on Etsy or locally or whatever else, or maybe you're just sitting on kind of that idea, and you're looking to scale it to a multi-million dollar venture.
Kevin Mako: That's what we're talking about today. So if we're talking about scaling from a hobby to multi-million, the thing that excites me is like, first and foremost, Victoria, you did it. And not only you did it, you did it, but you understand all these best practices to how
Kevin Mako: you perform that in an efficient way. And that's very exciting for our audience, because whether you are an inventor with that invention idea or whether you're a startup, the first things first is need to understand that it happens. People do go from zero to hero.
Kevin Mako: And Victoria is right here in front of us that went through. that journey. So, Victoria, why don't you break that down for us? What are the steps? What are the, what is the psychology? What is the logic that are essentially the best practice elements,
Victoria Wieck: ideally in order of going from that either sketch on a napkin or that small kind of local hobby product to becoming an international brand. Yeah. So basically, when I first started my business,
Victoria Wieck: I wanted to spend more time with my family. You know, my kids were very young. And when I was a kid, my parents immigrated to America,
Victoria Wieck: they each had two jobs. So I almost never saw them. So I was petrified that my kids would end up like me, you know, very loving parents, but I couldn't spend time with
Victoria Wieck: them. So my whole goal at that time was to try to make about 35 grand a year.
Victoria Wieck: I did have an MBA and a BS degree from UCLA at USC. So I thought that if my business didn't succeed, I at least had, you know, something i could go get a job somewhere so i wanted to make 35 grand a year but i wanted to kind
Victoria Wieck: of dictate my own time and um so i sketched out so i had no money so what i did was i sketched out a bunch of things that i thought there was by the way in the marketplace there was a void in the market
Victoria Wieck: back in and i know kevin you said your child is only what nine months old or something that's right yeah you you probably don't even remember um so this might be born to you but i was the first generation of women that went to work,
Victoria Wieck: you know, working in so like semi-management positions, management positions like senior vice president or, you know, that's what we aspire to be. So
Victoria Wieck: up to that point, women did not work outside a home in a professional environment. So in the workplace, you know, back then jewelry was sold, nighttime jewelry, which is very fancy diamonds and,
Victoria Wieck: you know, show off stuff that you were to social events. During the day, the day, the daytime jewelry was either very funky, plastic jewelry or just junky-looking stuff. They just weren't, you know, it was kind of almost disposable.
Victoria Wieck: So women that going to work for the first time, like a first generation going to work, they didn't really have a way to differentiate their wardrobe,
Victoria Wieck: you know, that told them they were polished, intelligent, they were successful,
Victoria Wieck: understated, elegant day style, but not outlandish. They didn't have jewelry like that at that time. So I saw a void there.
Victoria Wieck: And so I sketched pieces. I didn't even have money to make samples. So I sketched pieces. I, you know, had a lookbook, kind of. And I went to the local department stores and, you know,
Victoria Wieck: every department store I could find near, in a 40-mile radius. And I would ask the department store managers, you know, like a jewelry countermanager. And I love going to like the assistant buyers because they had a little bit or less of an ego. And they, they were more giving of information.
Victoria Wieck: So I would say, you know, if I had, you know, if I developed a line like this, would there be a market for that?
Victoria Wieck: And I was shocked how much information, you know, I could sell this for X amount of dollars. I can't sell that. But, you know, if you made this in a smaller piece. So I got a lot of feedback that way. I would then fix it.
Victoria Wieck: Then I would sketch them and I would really polish the sketch. I know I did a watercolor thing. And my water colors were very good. and I did a 3D almost like a spec sheet kind of.
Victoria Wieck: And I went to different places and I got, you know, once I got very consistent feedback, like I got like the eight styles that a lot of people just bit on, I then spent the money to get those samples made.
Victoria Wieck: Now, when I spent the money to go get samples made and, you know, I went a lot of the people that were willing to make those samples for you or overseas and I was, you know, contacting them at night. doing, you know, it was just a lot of hours doing that.
Victoria Wieck: But I'll tell you, the first mistake I were made on that, because mistakes are actually a part of your success journey,
Victoria Wieck: people would ask me,
Victoria Wieck: you know, if I make this sample for you, how many can you sell?
Victoria Wieck: And I would just say, well, I don't know. I mean, I was a young girl out of school. I had no idea, you know, so they said, I don't know. I mean, I could sell two. I could sell 200. I could sell 2,000. I have no clue.
Victoria Wieck: So what happened was, and I said this to everybody who asked me, well, what happened was I never got those samples.
Victoria Wieck: I ended up, when I went to the first trade show, because I never got samples, I went to the first trade show. I spent like $500 going to Las Vegas. That's where
Victoria Wieck: the jewelry show was. To try to find new vendors, I saw my samples out there in the market already.
Victoria Wieck: So those guys made my samples because they knew that if I even got an order, I couldn't like, you know, full of the money. So they went to the biggest guys and just basically, you know, presented it as a person of their own.
Victoria Wieck: So at that point, I had to learn how to like make copyrights and all that stuff on my own. So I kind of became my own little lawyer at that time.
Victoria Wieck: So at least when I sent things, I would say just was copyrighted and all that stuff. And I think the copyrights at that time was like 10 bucks of design or something. It wasn't too bad. So the next batch of samples I got,
Victoria Wieck: I, you know, again, that was probably majority of my,
Victoria Wieck: expense doing this. I went to a smaller market because I knew I was getting a little edgy about whether the vendors are going to actually ship the stuff and when they shipped it, it'd be high
Victoria Wieck: quality or not. So I went to the Dallas merchandise mart instead of like going to New York, which is where all my bigger customers were. And I, you know, called on all the little wholesalers to see like if they'd want it. And because also nobody comes to see like little wholesalers,
Victoria Wieck: and mom and pop wholesalers. So they were very happy to see me. And they all had meaningful clients. I mean, they had, you know, 200, 300 people that bought from them consistently, like little mom and pop stores.
Victoria Wieck: So I think my first order was like $500, $800, you know. So my very first order was $500, but I got a couple of other ones on that trip. And show enough,
Victoria Wieck: the Bengals and tennis spaces that I got, they did have some problems with hinges enclosures, they weren't tight, and either that or they were too loose. So I sort of fixed that,
Victoria Wieck: and I figured out which vendors were shipping me what. So once I got that going, I then took a trip
Kevin Mako: to New York. And, you know, I visited Sachs, Macy's, all those people. And I think my first order after I got that whole thing fixed, because the demand was so great for, you know, there was
Kevin Mako: millions of women working, and there wasn't jewelry like this. I think my first test order from Sacks was like $56,000 on two bracelets, which was, it caused a whole other problem, too, because I had to go get financing right there and then, but it was a good thing.
Kevin Mako: Wow, that's great. So, you know, a couple of things that I heard from in there. First of all,
Kevin Mako: start small, right? Yeah. Because you're going to be a lot more accessible. One of the big things that we have when we're dealing with clients is, you know, the first things first is, okay, how do we get into Walmart? Well, there's a lot of steps leading up to getting into the biggest retail.
Kevin Mako: on earth.
Kevin Mako: And it's amazing what you mentioned there, that when you went to these places, you talked to these small retailers who generally weren't approached by many people. They all a sudden were very excited to see you. And yet, although they were small, they still represented a
Kevin Mako: couple hundred stores or whatever else. So small, maybe to the overall market, but very large is an opportunity to you. The second thing that really stands out to me is ensuring that
Kevin Mako: you've got a great quality product. And that's when things really start to take off. If you start, you know, if you have issues, you really need to start small, work those kinks out.
Kevin Mako: And those two things kind of go together, both starting small and working the kinks out so that you can, when you're ready, start approaching, you know, getting into the big leagues and then scaling from there. Right. So just out of curiosity, though, before we go too much further,
Victoria Wieck: what was the, what was went through your mind and what was the decision making that had you basically not?
Victoria Wieck: take a job and risk it at all to do this business. Because you didn't go too much into that, but I'm curious, you had the opportunity to get great jobs. You got the degree, all this sort of
Victoria Wieck: stuff. And I just resonate a lot of myself because I did this business Mako Design right out of university, also turning down the jobs. So I'm curious if you can kind of highlight, you know,
Victoria Wieck: what was it that convinced you to take the big leap of faith and to go after? or what you were passionate about.
Victoria Wieck: Wow, what a great question. So I actually,
Victoria Wieck: you know, I was always a creative person and I wanted to study like fine art or literature. I'm an avid reader and I love to paint. And my father said, have you ever heard of Stevie Wonder? And I said, yes.
Victoria Wieck: He said to me,
Victoria Wieck: how about Leonardo da Vinci? I said, yes. He goes, well, they didn't go to fine art school and they didn't go to music school.
Victoria Wieck: So art is something that comes from within you. And if you go to a major university to learn how to do this, they're just going to ruin you, whatever you have. So he told me to go get a real job. So I actually got my degrees
Victoria Wieck: in finance because once I got to USC from my MBA school, my professor told me I was just never going to be good at marketing because he said I didn't really understand the nuances of marketing
Victoria Wieck: and so forth. So, you know, I'm just like an innocent kid. I mean, the professor is telling you you're not going to be very good at it. So I did switch my major, but I had taken way too many courses in marketing to kind of just like, oh, the whole things I ended up with two degrees, which was great for getting a job.
Victoria Wieck: So I did end up with the job,
Victoria Wieck: two different jobs, and I was just suffocating because here I'm creating, you know, I felt like I'm, I have a pulse on the customer, but everything that I was doing was being sort of like
Victoria Wieck: turned down or cut down in some way, by some guy who's got a budget going, and he's usually an accountant who really didn't have a pulse on the market, who didn't understand how to innovate or find a niche. I mean, they just wanted
Victoria Wieck: to get the biggest thing, and so it was always watered down thing, because when you try to be everything to everybody, you know, everything, there was no specialty there, right? So I was
Victoria Wieck: working probably 12 hours a day in my job, and I had a two-hour commute each way, because, you know, from LA, like, it's just crazy. So I just said, I just can't handle this. I could not see myself
Victoria Wieck: like having any kind of family life with that life. And I was miserable. So I actually had a whole mic drop moment in the middle of traffic.
Victoria Wieck: Like I just said, okay, I can't do this anymore. So, you know, I basically gave my boss notice the following Monday. It was Friday afternoon. I did end up staying for a couple of months to finish up all my projects for him. But that's how I started my company. Now,
Victoria Wieck: it's still very risky, Kevin, when you have no money.
Victoria Wieck: And I started my company in 89, 90. That was a, that was what led to the, the real estate meltdown in 91 through 94. That was a big meltdown. So the recession was just hitting there.
Victoria Wieck: And I, I was aware that if things didn't work out for me, that could be a multiple year unemployment for me. But I had to,
Kevin Mako: I had to live. I had to breathe. I just couldn't even just imagine myself. And the other thing, too, is I'm just glad you asked me this.
Kevin Mako: I believe there are basically two ways you make money. One way is to you do something that everybody does every day that's been doing of a thousand years,
Victoria Wieck: but you find a way to do it better and cheaper. Or you invent something new. I wasn't smart of them, but anything new. So I went with the other way. So, you know, no matter what, recessions, financial disasters.
Victoria Wieck: I mean, today in the middle of COVID, people are still getting. married. They're still celebrating anniversaries. There are birthdays. People are getting promoted, graduated. You know, there's all these things. There's nothing more classic than jewelry.
Kevin Mako: Why not find a way to innovate and elevate and get paid for it? And you ended up doing both. You did you ended up doing both innovation and elevation of, you know, the quality or the
Victoria Wieck: costs or the underlying metrics. You ended up kind of going on and doing both of those elements hand in hand, which really almost doubles down on the opportunity for you at that point. Well, true. And if any of you who are listening, listening to me and Kevin here,
Victoria Wieck: I have three steps there. You innovate, you elevate, innovate, and dominate.
Victoria Wieck: And if you go through the whole circle, that's how I went from zero to $500 million. And I did this with no loans, no mentors, no advertising. So it can't be done. I'm not an extraordinary person by any means. I'm
Victoria Wieck: I'm just a little girl here. You can all do this.
Victoria Wieck: No joke. You really can.
Victoria Wieck: Can you break down those three elements?
Victoria Wieck: Elevate, innovate, innovate, dominate.
Victoria Wieck: And I can go through, you know, each. Yeah, let's go through each one and break those down a bit because that's great. It's a great framework. So when you elevate, so jewelry, like I said, in the macro field out there when I was
Victoria Wieck: starting my career, there was all this jewelry. and jewelry was sold mostly,
Victoria Wieck: you know, this is how many carrots. I'm sure you bought jewelry for your wife. You know, this is a two-carot diamond. It's an H, whatever,
Victoria Wieck: clarity, and it's X amount because it's easy to sell it this way to a guy. Jewelry industry has kind of perfected this whole hypothetical quality measurement thing, the forces of diamond or whatever. But what about those people who don't want a diamond?
Victoria Wieck: What about people who want to, you know, a rare gem? they never really you know when you elevate you elevate the quality so for me the hinges and all this
Victoria Wieck: stuff has to be perfectly and also when I made my bangles I made sure that the bangles were oval they used to be like circles what human wrist is not oval I mean human wrist is not a circle it's an
Victoria Wieck: oval so I basically you know figured out of the fit that women mostly most of the jewelers at that time were male it was a male dominated jewelry business so I tested a all this. So I tested the fit.
Victoria Wieck: You know, heavyweight earrings. I mean, they tear your earrings apart. There are millions of women out there right now getting their ear surgery because, you know, they've got giant poles that are stretching because they just never thought about that.
Victoria Wieck: So lightweight, something that's comfortable, high quality pieces that's going to last your lifetime. Whether they're spending 50 bucks or $500 or $50,000, jewelry is bought for sentimental reasons.
Victoria Wieck: So you want it to last. And when I say that, you want it to lack, quality has to last, but also
Kevin Mako: style has to last. So in my designs, I put something timeless in every design so that it could go from generation to generation seamlessly,
Kevin Mako: such as if you put floral elements or butterflies or things out of nature, you know, butterflies have been here probably longer than a few billion years longer than us. They're going to be here. So when you put those classic elements, it doesn't have to be
Kevin Mako: screaming out, but it could be something that's there,
Kevin Mako: that makes it very timeless, sentimental. And And then your messaging could be, look, you know, if you're like in my bridal business, marketing messages, it never says, oh, there's a, you know, two-carat diamond for X amount.
Kevin Mako: We say things like, your love story is unique. Why not design a ring to tell your story?
Kevin Mako: Wouldn't you rather buy it from somebody like that, then, you know, so all of our messaging was really elevating their life experiences as a result of being connected to our jewelry line. So that's elevating. You know what's interesting?
Victoria Wieck: Just before we go to innovation, interesting about your elevation thing.
Victoria Wieck: All of these elevations that you mentioned here, innovations, they're small incremental improvements. You weren't coming up with like an entirely new piece of jewelry that nobody had seen before. You were looking at an existing piece.
Victoria Wieck: And you know what, nowadays, whether it's a hardware invention or a piece of jewelry or even a service or software company, it really, some people get caught up when they think, okay, well, I haven't created the next light bulb.
Victoria Wieck: You don't need to create the next teleportation machine or whatever else to make a $500 million business. You can just look at a market and say, look, I can improve this just a little bit. And when you do that, that probably is to what you're about to say next.
Victoria Wieck: That's when you can really look at scaling and creating an empire. It doesn't require, and I think that's really what's important. It doesn't require a major change, minor incremental improvements.
Victoria Wieck: improvements, done well at a high quality, start small, start with quality, start with improvements,
Victoria Wieck: and then, you know, grow from there.
Victoria Wieck: Yeah, it's absolutely true. And I think even more basic than that is think about how your customer absorbs your
Kevin Mako: information, absorbs what you have to, how they experience things.
Victoria Wieck: You know, for example, I mean, we talked about this earlier, that you take coffee, basic, something as basic as coffee, people have been drinking coffee. for, I don't know how many years.
Victoria Wieck: And here comes Starbucks.
Victoria Wieck: They take, I mean, how many of us, I mean, I go through McDonald's every, I mean, pass by 10 McDonald's before I get to the Starbucks so I can pay $5 for my cup of coffee instead of the dollar, right?
Victoria Wieck: That's exactly, you know, it's pretty much what I did with my jewelry business in that, you know, it doesn't, it just doesn't take like a brain surgery to figure out what your consumer, what your end user would prefer,
Victoria Wieck: what they would pay a premium for. So, you know, before that, costume jewelry or silver jewelry was sold for 10, 20 bucks. My average price point back then was $125 in silver, which is 500% higher than the going
Victoria Wieck: average out there. But they bought it gladly because it met a need at a different level. Right. So small improvement and then messaging directly to what they want, right? What's the end goal? to that person.
Victoria Wieck: So let me just, you know, I know we're not going to talk a lot about my TV appearances, but let me tell you how when I'm on TV,
Victoria Wieck: I kind of sort of, my messaging on TV sort of is the embodiment of the whole brand. So for example,
Victoria Wieck: even today, jewelers were not successful,
Victoria Wieck: they will come on TV and they'll say something like, you know, I'm just going to do what other people do and what I do. And this has to do with what they're thinking inside and because that's how you talk, you know, what you have in your mind.
Victoria Wieck: They'll come on and say, you know, I love summer. You know, summer is so fun. And, you know, I just love, you know, when my husband and I go on our boat around the lake and, you know, and my kids are on, I just love everything about it. And I designed this wonderful piece of jewelry.
Victoria Wieck: And you know what I love the most about it? It sparkles and does this and does that. And guess what? Today, it's like, you know, I don't know,
Victoria Wieck: 150 bucks.
Victoria Wieck: So that's good. you know, that's okay, because, you know, a lot of people want to sort of establish their expert expert authority by talking about how great they are, they've got a boat, all that.
Victoria Wieck: I'll come on and say something like, you know what, aren't you all glad that summer is finally here, we can go out and enjoy life like the way you used to? I can't wait for you to experience this collection and you can go out with your family
Victoria Wieck: out, you know, whether you're out there enjoying your life at, you know, barbecue or at your mother's birthday,
Kevin Mako: you're going to be glowing and you're going to be radiant because you know you made a smart purchase and you know when you get those compliments, you know that they know that you didn't
Victoria Wieck: waste money because you buy nice things. And today you could have it for 20 bucks on a down payment. And, you know, how nice is it that after you enjoy this forever, that you can pass it on to your daughter?
Victoria Wieck: Because I've been on TV for 25 years. What that means is you can't be. on anything for 25 years if you're not good and if you tell lies, right? So the fact that people
Victoria Wieck: are still calling me with, you know, they're getting compliments 25 years. How many things do you have in your closet that is still relevant, right? So that purchase is something that is worthy of passing on to your next generation. So, you know, I use the word you,
Victoria Wieck: probably five times or every time I use the word I. And I think that when you develop products so that you're thinking about their enjoyment, what they're going to do now in their backyard barbecue to what
Victoria Wieck: that means when they have their birthdays and she's glowing to 50 years from now.
Victoria Wieck: It makes a very different messaging. So this is how you're elevating the same thing simply with messaging, but then you have to back it up with things that's going to last 20 years in quality as well
Victoria Wieck: as styling. So you've got the elevate part. Then that comes to the innovation. part and then they dominate, right? So now we're talking the innovation section.
Victoria Wieck: And you're going to,
Victoria Wieck: the innovation is even more basic. So when I got into the jewelry business and I would go to the manufacturers and they would always send me necklaces, they're like, okay, well,
Victoria Wieck: what inch, what length do you want for your necklace? And they'd offer me 18, 20, 24, 30 inches. These are standard length the jewelry industry uses. So I said, well, I don't really know anybody who looks really
Victoria Wieck: great with like a pendant that's 18 inches. I mean, most of our necks are like 13 inches. I mean, guys necks, when you buy shirts, you know, it's like 15, 16 inches. Why are we walking around with 18 inches when you're like 20 years old? So, I mean, it drops down way low. And I said,
Victoria Wieck: well, what about a 16 inch necklace for like a choker? And they're like, no, no, no, we don't do that. I said, well, why not? Well, they would tell me, well, this is the way it's always been done every jewelry company stocks those lengths. And I said, well, have you ever thought
Victoria Wieck: about, have you ever seen anybody with that on? Because the best length actually is 15 and a half.
Victoria Wieck: So I had a really tough time getting people to kind of buy into that.
Victoria Wieck: But when I did it, when I did the 15 and a half inches, that just doing that was 25% of my business. Wow. I mean, by that alone.
Victoria Wieck: Another small incremental improvement. Small thing because it was out there. Braclets, which was like my number one category at the time,
Victoria Wieck: they were all ordered in seven and a half. All the jewelers. If you go to a store right now and you want to check out a ring, they're usually going to be size seven. So if you were anything other than that, you have to get a special order. You have to get it, you know,
Victoria Wieck: size down. Nobody stocks these things. So I'm like, if you look around, I said, you know, my Asian side of the family, they were size six bracelets, five and a half six bracelets. And my Caucasian side of the family, they were seven and a half to eight inches. So nobody wears a seven
Victoria Wieck: inches. I mean, nobody in my family, nobody, I don't know anyone who can wear seven inches. I mean, I'm sure there are people who can, but 100% of the stock is eight and seven inches. What's wrong with that? So I offered the bracelet. It's like six, six and a half, seven,
Victoria Wieck: seven and a half. I ordered a bunch of different. But you have, if you're going to do that, you really have to understand, you have to track your sales, right? But doing those four or five different lengths, like was another 25% increase in volume.
Victoria Wieck: So those were. Those were innovations, but not innovations.
Victoria Wieck: Then what happened was I thought, you know what? After a little while, I thought, okay, these guys really just really hate making these stupid. Like, you have to understand, like, chains come in like on a spool.
Victoria Wieck: So they just have to chop it and put them on, but they hated the idea of having extra stock because gold is kind of expensive. So I said, I'll tell you what, I'll make a deal.
Victoria Wieck: What about if we make it in 16 inches, but, have like a two, three inch tail, like just to hold on it so you could actually, somebody can wear it at 16, 17, 18, because you just have an extender built into the necklace. So that way,
Victoria Wieck: a person who actually, you know, she has a choice, right? And you only have to stock one, one ninth chain now because you got that three. And if you really have to, you can sell the extender separately.
Victoria Wieck: So that actually, today that's almost standard now on TV. But at the time I did it. They were like, oh, what a brilliant idea.
Victoria Wieck: It was just thinking, you know, about how I would want to wear it.
Victoria Wieck: And then I did make some really big innovation such as, I don't have that
Kevin Mako: with me, but I have a thing called a bridge ring where you actually built two rings. I mean, it looks like there's a bridge on the bottom of it and the top layer is all elevated. And that
Kevin Mako: one did require engineering because when you put like one ring on top of one another, you can't size them ever.
Kevin Mako: So, and I sold it that way. I sold it like, look, when you, when you see somebody with the bridge ring,
Kevin Mako: so there, it's two rings on top of one another, so that it's, it's really designed so that the light really comes through the top stone. And it's only done at very high end
Victoria Wieck: pieces. And secondly, it's done mostly in custom designs for one size only because you can't ever be sized. So when somebody sees you with it, they know you spend money. They know it's expensive.
Victoria Wieck: They know it's custom. So it becomes this real, how would I say it, conversation piece. And it just looks stunning anyway.
Victoria Wieck: So, and I did have to stock side all the different sizes myself. I had to actually master them. But, you know, in the first bridge rings, I actually maybe broke even or maybe
Victoria Wieck: a little bit of money because I didn't know like how many size fives and you know, whatever I needed.
Victoria Wieck: But what happened was anybody who bought that, they always wanted to buy matching earrings or pendants or other things with that. And they also, if they wanted anything
Victoria Wieck: special for any of their life's milestone moments, they always came to me. So, you know, those innovations actually got your market share, really. And, you know, TV stations. I mean,
Victoria Wieck: I know I had all the jewelers watching my shows because it's like ways you're going to come up with next. So again, these are not like, I'm not a scientist. I don't, you know, it would just be almost a little stretch to consider that innovation,
Victoria Wieck: but it sort of was innovation that was not innovation. And then on top of that, on top of that, you've stacked innovation, these small incremental innovations on top of each other.
Victoria Wieck: So you've got multiple different small innovations across your line now, which really started creating scale, which I'm guessing then leads into that third element, domination, right? So talk about domination. Like how do you, how do you, you've got to the
Victoria Wieck: industry, you've started creating your niche, you've started creating your part of that, that world. How do our listeners then leverage that to start dominating their industry and making sure they've got a big moat around their business?
Victoria Wieck: So, so what happens after that is when you are the person known to consistently innovate and elevate and getting premium pricing for the
Victoria Wieck: same thing that everybody else is, and you have a brand, I always got the first call. So when somebody discovers that, you know, I remember there was a stone, it's a lot of your
Victoria Wieck: people who are listeners, if they're guys, they may not know this, but people call it mint quarts or green amethyst. There's all these names for them, but the technical term for that is praise your light when they came up with this sort of like a greenish
Victoria Wieck: they were looking for amethyst but they found this greenish material greenish quartz I always got the first call and when I got the first call I'll just tell them we know how many carrots do you have I think he had he had like 100,000 carrots I'll say well I'll take it all
Victoria Wieck: because I knew I could sell it I'll take it all and so there are certain things that just never made it to the market for like three years and you know when you're on TV and you're selling
Victoria Wieck: something like, you know, 10, 20, 100,000 units a month when you got the show, you have a market for this. You know, so by that point,
Victoria Wieck: my jewelry was sold at all the major department stores, Harrods, London, Galleries Lapid, Takashima, Japan. I was on the Japanese TV network. I was on
Victoria Wieck: HSN here. And I had duty-free, all the cruise ships. I mean, I did like Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Holland, I was on all of them. All the different
Victoria Wieck: airline. So I mean, every one of those stones is like five carrots. So it came out to about 20,000 units. I was going to, it was going to go out like in four days, you know, in my world. So you start
Victoria Wieck: to dominate. If you have, if you're a minor, if you're, you know, a little guy mining in Tanzania or wherever it is, wouldn't you want to make that one phone call and get it done rather than,
Victoria Wieck: you know, go to 20 trade shows? So I always got my pick up the litter. And then when you have things that no one else has,
Kevin Mako: I was then able to go to a cutter, like a gemstone cutter, and say, you know what?
Kevin Mako: I don't understand why the whole industry has these ratios, like 8 by 6, 10 by 8, 14 by 12, like, what the heck is that? Because when you do the same thing that everybody got the same thing, they all kind of look the same. You're all drawing the same circles and ovals.
Kevin Mako: I want a different cut. I want a different, what they told me, well, if you change it, if you go from 1410 to like 14.7, we have to hire a whole engineering team. team to figure out how to re-faceted the 58 facets so that they're all going to, they're going to get the maximum.
Kevin Mako: And we'll go get it done. Get it done. Seriously. It's like, hello.
Kevin Mako: So whenever somebody says, well, no, it can't be done. I'm like, that's music to my ears. Again, why can it be done now?
Kevin Mako: And I always find the way to get it done. So my designers, designs then became much more exclusive because I had, you know, stones that were exclusive and then I had cuts that no one else could, you know, kind of. Because at that point, small.
Kevin Mako: companies could not compete with me. You can't be a little mom and pop and go, you know what, I want a whole 30 people, fashion engineers to come up with a new cut. Well, I was able to do that. So that's when you start to dominate.
Kevin Mako: So getting from starting a tiny little business to
Kevin Mako: elevation is like a zero problem. You just have to look at the problems. You have to look at as a consumer. What would I prefer? Right. And then you go from there to innovation. if you're so good at, but if you are so passionate, I mean,
Kevin Mako: your passion could be gardening.
Kevin Mako: I got pet peeves about gardening. Like, I don't garden a lot, but I love, I love nature. I spend, you know, I live in California, so we spend about 80% of our time outdoors. And whenever I do pick up
Kevin Mako: something, that stupid gardening material is too heavy or they break on you. Well, somebody should invent something because I'm willing to pay a lot of money for, you know, a good piece of equipment that, you know, just gives you a lot of pleasure.
Kevin Mako: Same thing with, you know, anything that you know, people are doing every single day. It could be coffee, croissant, jewelry, whatever.
Kevin Mako: There is room for improvement, I assure you. Absolutely. And there's money to be made. Lots of things still to be developed. Lots of room. And there's new technologies, which add new avenues for all that. And absolutely, you know, a common thread that I've heard through your processes
Kevin Mako: from the starting phases through to your kind of innovation phases.
Victoria Wieck: into the growth pages really is having those small incremental changes. You even mention at the end when you're a multi-hundred million dollar business, you're still working with factories to improve or change or do something different
Victoria Wieck: that makes you unique. That's the great thing about inventors and innovators. A lot of the listeners on the show is most of them already have those ideas. They have those small innovations. So I think your story is incredible to show that you don't need a major innovation.
Victoria Wieck: It could be a minor innovation. and then continue to innovate to scale and then continue to innovate again to dominate and conquer. And it all starts from just that first kind of aha moment.
Victoria Wieck: And you mentioned it with your early jewelry lines, a couple of things that you saw that weren't happening in the market and you went after those and that allowed you tremendous room to scale. The other thing that I find interesting about this too is you mentioned
Victoria Wieck: something about as you kind of, as you were innovating, it opened up other. doors to essentially innovate further as a re-engineering the tooling line that you're talking
Victoria Wieck: about, right? So if you innovate, it gives you power because now you have the power to have a little more leverage with distributors or wholesalers or whatever else. Also, let's say if you're in
Victoria Wieck: the startup mode and you don't have the strength of other manufacturers because you're new and whatever else, well, maybe this innovation gives you that power to compete at a level edge with them or even above them. But it really all comes down to
Victoria Wieck: innovation throughout the phases, and the greatest thing about what you've said today, and I've seen it in many of our products, you look at our client, the tri plunger, right? It's a triangle-shaped toilet plunger. That was his idea.
Victoria Wieck: And now at any store he goes to, he generally is conquering the toilet plunger section, because most toilets now have a triangle shape as opposed to a circular
Victoria Wieck: shape. So obviously, by his triangle, a small incremental improvement to an existing product, and you can have a multi-million dollar product line. So yeah, I really appreciate all that. As we're wrapping up
Victoria Wieck: here, what are some, you know, just final lessons, nuggets for startups, hardware folks, people getting new innovations out of the door? What are some final nuggets, final pieces of advice for them
Victoria Wieck: as they grow in the early stages of their business to, to both innovate and scale their new products? You know, I think that a lot of people say, you know, you learn from your failures and you, and they
Victoria Wieck: lead to successes later on if you choose to learn from that. And those are, you know, and I agree with that. But, I mean, in my case, you, I would go even further and say that you need to plan
Victoria Wieck: failures.
Victoria Wieck: And I'm going to go and explain that because we didn't get to do this a little bit. You need to plan your failures. You need to make sure that you do fail in something. Because if you
Kevin Mako: never fail, that means you've never really tested the boundaries of anything. So like when I go on TV, when I design products, for example, I would have, I know things that I know that I can
Kevin Mako: count on by a certain point. You know, if you're entrepreneur right now already, you know things
Victoria Wieck: that are bringing you some money, you know, the five things that's bringing you 80% of your business. But you know what, that's not going to last you forever. You're going to need to find the next thing. So how do you find the next thing? So how do you find the next thing? Well, you have to try.
Victoria Wieck: You have to reach out to the ones that, you know, here is the next sort of a natural extension of what I'm doing now. But I think I can reach this far. So, you know, go reach out to them and plan on that thing, failure, failing because you might go, you know what,
Victoria Wieck: if I'm selling something for plunger for, you know, I don't know, 20 bucks, and you say, well, I got a super speed, whatever, it looks good and all that. I'm going to, I think the natural extension is something that looks good, that's smaller, that's mobile, whatever, self-cleaning for.
Victoria Wieck: or 40 bucks. Well, come up with that too, but you might go, you know what, for somebody who
Kevin Mako: really, really is into this, you know, who's got eight bedrooms or something, maybe I'll come up the $100 version of it. You know, you'll actually learn something and you will understand why
Victoria Wieck: they don't buy something and you'll go, you know what, if I'm going to get the $100,
Kevin Mako: I probably should have added this feature or that feature into this. So plan on failures because they're a good thing. Don't think, like if you try something that doesn't work. And, you know, going back to the light bulb thing.
Kevin Mako: I mean, Thomas Edison, I think, failed like a thousand times, but the thousand and one time was a light bulb. I mean, I don't think you should go that far. But if you have a business right now,
Kevin Mako: don't always go for the one that's going to suck out the most money. Think about, again, the customer experience and see, because some people are going to pay, you know, I mean, in my private business, the one of a kind, so I have the TV business
Kevin Mako: and I have the regular store business, and then I have the one of a kind. those people pay $50, $100,000 for something, essentially the same designer.
Kevin Mako: But I think that it's, so the final word is believe in yourself and failure is a normal thing. And that if you're very good at it, you plan it so that you get, you know, you can sort of expect the rewards out of that.
Kevin Mako: And then lastly,
Kevin Mako: you don't have to invent anything to make a fortune. whatever your hobbies right now, whatever you're passionate about, start thinking about monetizing that because the chances are you could probably make a pretty good living out of it.
Kevin Mako: That's amazing. Victoria, very powerful advice, much appreciated for you to be on the show.
Kevin Mako: Where do you want people to go to learn about buying your jewelry or reaching out to something you're interested in? Like, what's going on? What do you want to tell everybody about right now? Give us a, you know, websites, whatever else, we can check it out.
Kevin Mako: Yeah. So come to the million dollar hobbies podcast. I actually started a whole podcast talking about. And I have guests that have taken their hobby to a multimillion dollar business. In fact, all
Kevin Mako: of my guests have done over a million dollars with their hobby. So come to a million dollar hobbies podcast. And then there's also a million dollar hobbies.com. And you can, and you
Kevin Mako: can also come to Victoriawick.com and all about my other things as well, the jewelry and all that. But I'm not, you know, I'm not, I didn't come on here to sell anything. My website is pretty much right now, not an e-commerce site.
Kevin Mako: It's just a pure engagement site because I feel like people are just being told to buy this, buy that, all that. So I want people to just come and chill out, learn, and I'm just having a lot of fun with that. Well, really appreciate it for your efforts on all that stuff. A million-dollar podcast.
Kevin Mako: Million-dollar hobbies. Oh, million-dollar hobbies podcast. Right. Right on. Excited to check it out. Victoria, thanks again for being on the show. Much appreciate it. Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode. of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by
Narrator: Mako Design + Invent, the original and leading firm in North America to provide global caliber in-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients.
Narrator: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako-design.com. That's M-A-K-O-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako Designs for Design Studios from coast to coast.
Narrator: Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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