Jennifer Sieg chats with Olivia Jenkins, the founder of D. Louise, about how she transformed Instagram into a virtual storefront and her vision for the future of e-commerce
Entrepreneur Olivia Jenkins laughs when she thinks about the day she realised that her corporate nine-to-five role wasn’t enough: “I can’t go back to that job.”
Jenkins, now 27, founded her London-based jewellery brand D. Louise in 2021 shortly after she was told she had to return to the office after pandemic restrictions eased.
Turns out, the security of her full-time role wasn’t enough to keep her fulfilled.
Little did she know, however, a hunt for something with purpose would soon turn into a widely recognised and rapidly growing start-up just a few years later.
D. Louise, an e-commerce jewellery brand known for its durability and affordability, hit the ground running in its first year of trading, with it now reportedly expecting to hit revenue of £9.2m this year.
It secured fourth place on the FEBE Growth 100 list this year, which Jenkins says was only one of the many milestones she and her team have experienced so far.
So, what is it that made D. Louise so sought-after in the first place?
Crafting a good product
Jenkins laughs as she tells me she never knew anything about the world of entrepreneurship, let alone where to even start when it came to having an idea.
“I don’t know anything about setting up a business. I don’t know finance, I don’t know products. I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she recalls.
She did, however, know a little something about jewellery, especially when it came to being frustrated with finding an everyday accessory that was affordable and long-lasting.
“For me, jewellery has always been a big part of my life,” she says.
“I knew if I was going to do a business [that] I need to be super interested in it… if it’s something I don’t care about, I’ll probably do it for six months and then want to give up.”
Once she found the right product and “put it through its test”, she says, everything else started to fall into place.
“I wanted something high quality like these luxury brands, but also offered the accessibility of the more affordable brands,” she added.
Creating a virtual storefront
Naturally, Jenkins started to use social media to promote her new side hustle, but interest in the product grew faster than she had anticipated.
The brand’s Instagram now has a total of 151,000 followers and is treated as if it is a store itself.
“It’s [social media] a really, really powerful tool and I think if you get it right, you can obviously succeed in it very, very well,” Jenkins adds.
“How we view our social media, how we view our Instagram, it’s like that is our store… If someone was going to come in in person, what would we want to show them? What value do we want to add to their lives?”
That is, she says, as long as you remain true to your brand’s purpose and authenticity.
“Where people trip up on Instagram is when they try to be someone else who they’re not, or they try to lie, or they try and go viral, all these things,” Jenkins says.
“I think at the end of the day, the customer is super, super smart, and people can see through non-genuine and inauthentic content.”
Finding a purpose
From funding challenges and regulatory hurdles to high operational costs and shortage of accessible talent, the list of start-up challenges can seem never-ending.
The power of purpose seems to dominate our conversation, however, especially when Jenkins hints at how important it was for her to establish core values for the brand from the start.
She adds: “I [knew I] needed to do something which was going to make me want to do this for a very long time, and that is when I decided to name it after my mum, Deborah Louise, who passed away in 2017.
“I feel like that has really helped me from the very beginning to be like, no, I need to stick to my values [and] what I really believe in.
“I honestly think that’s probably why we have had so much success in such a short space of time.”
Revolutionising the high street
What’s next for the six-person team at D. Louise seems bright, especially after recently securing the investment and advisory support from former Gymshark chief executive Steve Hewitt.
With a close eye on consumer trends, however, the founder seems confident that a physical presence is crucial to giving her customers what they want.
“It’s a bit of a tough world to navigate,” Jenkins says, with a laugh.
She adds: “So it’s not something that I want to rush into and just have [as] a tick box exercise – I want to revolutionise the jewellery industry on the high street.
“If that takes us another year to do, then I don’t mind waiting, because I know once we do it, it will be really, really good, and it will be our best foot forward.”
CV
Name: Olivia Jenkins
Company: D. Louise
Founded: 2021
Staff: Six
Title: Chief branding officer
Age: 27
Born: Cardiff, Wales
Lives: Wimbledon
Studied: Business management at the University of Reading
Talents: Seeing the positives in every situation
Motto: Life happens for you, not to you
Most known for: D. Louise
First Ambition: To create a life for myself that I could be proud of
Favourite book: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
Best piece of advice: Spend time figuring out what you actually want and then go after it