Of Gold and Dust One thing the pandemic did for businesses is normalise the good old Zoom interview which makes interviewing incredible Aussie women so easy! Mama was lucky enough to recently have a great little Zoom-chat with Sydney’s wonderful Samantha Wills.
You may remember Samantha as the self-titled jewellery designer. She started her jewellery company on her kitchen table in Bondi when she was just 21 years old. By 26 she had turned over her first million dollars and her designs were being worn by celebrities like Eva Mendes, Katy Perry and Rachel Zoe. Her earrings were even featured in the second Sex and the City movie. Dividing her time between Australia and New York, her life certainly looked all glitz and glamour, but Samantha had a very different experience behind the scenes which she reveals in her new book Of Gold and Dust. A far cry from her humble beginnings as a child growing up in Port Macquarie, today Samantha has amassed 217k followers on Instagram! Her love of jewellery came as an 11-year-old when her mum put her into a beading class at her local craft shop. Here she learnt the basis of jewellery making, which she loved, and continued this through high school as a hobby selling a few pieces here and there in the playground. When she was 20 she moved to Sydney and started making jewellery to pass the time in between her part-time retail job. The Bondi market, which was a big platform for Australian designers, was her first step into proper sales and it was at this same time that a friend mentioned she had a local showroom for Australian Fashion Week where she was wholesaling some brands and asked Samantha if she’s like to include some pieces. Unsure if what she was creating was a hobby or a brand, she took the plunge and said yes and ended up filling $17,000 worth of orders. She was officially a brand!
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At 21 she quite her retail job and threw everything at it. Working 22 hour a day with bleeding hands from all the labour. Thinking the more she sold the morn money she’d makes, three years in and $80k in debt she realised she know how to build a brand but not how to run a business! But working with the right people made the business a success as well. So after 15 years of success, and a business turning over $12 million a year, why did she close the business?
“I decided the close the business in 2018, but if I’m really honest as a creative I could feel that light starting to dim 2 years earlier.” In 15 years she had designed 12,000 pieces and whilst she could design with her hands but she was no longer designing it with her heart. She felt designing without her heart was too fraudulent and she wanted to honour her brand’s legacy. Selling a self-named business didn’t feel right so she decided to close this chapter of her life. Besides the lack of heart Samantha’s health was also suffering and she was exhausted. The constant commute between New York and Sydney, with 6 weeks in New York and 10 days in Sydney, was taking its toll. Despite being in pain Samantha continued to put off going to the doctor because she was just “too busy”. It was during this time Samantha decided to freeze her eggs. At 39 she thought she would know very clearly by now in life and assumed having a child would be one of them, but for her this was not unwaveringly clear yet. Unsure if and when she really wanted to become a mother, even unsure if this was a possibility, she thought freezing her eggs would provide the safety net should she make that decision to become a mum. It was also through this
