Nina Heyd, Capulet Jewelry, Founder Interview – Creating Eternal Treasures
Hanna: Welcome Nina It is a pleasure to speak to you today.
Nina: Thank you. It’s a pleasure for me.
Hanna: Since you launched Capulet Jewelry in 2010, it has seen incredible international success including attracting a wide celebrity audience with clients like Karl Lagerfeld, Lady Gaga, Johnny Depp, and Paloma Faith. You have been nominated for the New Faces Award and collaborated with Constantine Film to create a collection for the movie The Three Musketeers starring Orlando Bloom, and Mila Jovovich.
I love the motto that you have for your company. You say, “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” You’re not just a jewelry designer, you often share that you create little treasures for eternity with Capulet.
Nina: Yes, that’s completely correct.
Hanna: Wonderful. Your success as a female founder is truly inspirational for many women. Where did you begin and what brought you into the world of jewelry?
Nina: There is probably a bit of a longer story because there were a lot of developments in my life even as a female founder. In the beginning, around 30 years ago, I just started with the most artificial idea in my mind. I just wanted to create these little treasures, which you can just pass on to your children and your grandchildren.
The jewelry pieces are growing with you and telling your own story. That was in my mind in the beginning. I didn’t think about, you know, turning online profits and everything. It was just the value of the jewelry itself. I love that. I have to admit, I still love every piece of jewelry but now we are more manufacturers.
Don’t just produce a few pieces per month. It’s a pretty, pretty high amount of pieces we’re forging right now. In the last few years, it developed.
I changed my mind in the direction of a female founder.
You know, in a startup kind of way. It was also interesting to grow the company because I started completely on my own. Honestly, with no idea of business. Just with a very big dream. I have to admit to living the dream because I’m still creating the jewelry, not with my own hands all the time. Now I have a very good team of Goldsmiths with me. Now it’s just creating, of course, a lot of marketing stuff and all that to be more popular, more famous with a calculator and it works well.
Hanna: I love it. Capulet has a very specific brand DNA and as in your mission statement, every piece is unique and individual. What would you say are your biggest sources of inspiration in terms of design?
Nina: I think it is literature and music. You know, I was always a very great fan of Latin. So very traditional, but I am very related to language. Of course, it is inspired by the Shakespeare story. That’s the reason the company is Capulet, because Capulet is the surname of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. I think it’s so important to tell a good story, even if it is not my personal story.
Usually, I’m not telling my own story. It’s more interesting that the clients tell their stories and we transfer the story into a special piece of jewelry so we are very focused on this special piece for example, for weddings and love stories, and sometimes I hear a lot of stories about hospital stays and journeys, sickness and all the stuff. You are always wearing a special kind of jewelry. What reminds you of a special story or what reminds you of “I made it.” Jewellery is such a personal thing.
Hanna: Absolutely. Has jewelry and design always been a passion for you? Like did you grow up knowing that you wanted to be a jewelry designer?
Nina: No, I’m coming from somewhere completely different. So I studied media science. I finished that and I went to German television. I was always creative. Today I’m wearing black but usually my clothes are a bit exaggerated. Everyone kept telling me you have to do something with fashion. But of course, I love fashion. We all do.
Hanna: I can still hear that fresh entrepreneurial essence even after the brand has been existing for quite some time now. What would you say has been your biggest challenge in launching a Capulet and taking it to the success it is today?
Nina: I didn’t study business. I studied media science. So all of the business side and bookwork stuff and even the very complicated tech stuff, I needed to learn. This is the advice I give young startups, especially females, search for someone who is doing all your bookwork and tech stuff and all the stuff you’re not interested in or familiar with. Now 10-13 years later, I’m completely data-driven and focused on my analytics.
Hanna: That’s great advice. How did you get the media attention and the attention of celebrities?
Nina: I will say yes it was it was luck also but I think our jewelry is really pretty and I think you can see immediately the hard work in it. I’m not a learned Goldsmith but trends are not interesting in jewellery in my world. It’s an honor that a lot of celebrities a lot of celebrities you didn’t mention are wearing our jewelry, for example, Lenny Kravitz. I’m more interested in the special customer who’s writing emails and she’s, for example, a nurse and she’s telling me “I’m saving money for my first capulet piece. I’m saving for three months now and next month I can buy it.” Maybe that sounds a bit weird or kind of dramatic, but that is why I’m living for Capulet jewelry. Not especially for the celebrities. Of course, that’s cool. But the people who understand Capulet and want to have a special piece, and these are the ones I love and I’m working for.
Hanna: What’s next for Capulet?
Nina: The next step is to be completely capulet worldwide. I want to know 110% That all my manufacturers have this German handcrafted Goldsmith standard.
Hanna: What advice do you have for a female founder who has the desire to launch?
Nina: I want to be careful with this advice because I think it is very important that you have your own fire burning for your brand. But you should have a plan. the advice is 50% dream but the other 50% Have a plan stay focused and have a strategy.
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