How to Build a Second Company Without Investors or a Board

Melanie Barr: Welcome to She Built It. I'm Melanie Barr. Most people spend months researching jewelry for life's biggest moments and still walk away unsure they made the right choice. Ally Galgano built Serpentine Jewels to change that. A graduate gemologist, former Goldman Sachs professional, and founder behind Charm & Chain, one of the first online jewelry brands sold in 2015. Ally spent years working privately with clients before formalizing what she had already built, a modern private jeweler where gemologist expertise, design, and trusted guidance come together in one practice. This year, Serpentine Jewels celebrates 10 years. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Town & Country, Wall Street Journal Magazine, and People. Ally, welcome to She Built It. Welcome to She Built It. I'm Melanie Barr. Thank you for joining us, Ally.

Speaker 2: >> Thank you so much for having me today, Melanie. So excited to be here.

Melanie Barr: >> You had already built and sold one business before starting Serpentine. When you had the opportunity to build again, what did you know you wanted to

Speaker 2: do differently the second time around? >> The second time around, I really focused on trying to create a job for myself where I didn't have to answer to anyone. What that meant was not having investors, not having a board. That has really been paramount to my mental health, to be honest. I feel now that I've established a company and a routine where I have amazing people that are on board that help me, but they all work for me and I don't feel like I have to work for them. Because in my first business that I sold, there were ultimately creative differences, many differences between us and the company that acquired us, and it didn't work out very well in the everyday management of the company. I am happy to be an 100% fully owned founder business.

Melanie Barr: >> It's amazing that you went through that the first time around because it definitely is a different type of business. One that you want to live in every day versus one that you want to scale, bring in investors, and ultimately sell. It's amazing that you've been able to

Speaker 2: >> I much prefer this to be honest. And I I just remember in the last company that I built, I was always thinking about investors, what we were going to say in the next board meeting. At the end of the day, it just felt like a big waste of time. I'm happy to be in this position where I can of course seek outside counsel and I have plenty of people who if I had a board, I would want to sit on the board, but I already get advice from them and I don't need anything more formal and I certainly don't need the feeling of how am I going

Melanie Barr: to explain this to someone else? >> And it probably feels good to drive the business forward in the direction that you want to and have that freedom to be

Speaker 2: able to do it. >> For sure. It's been one of the greatest gifts of my life to grow the business that I started. It was such a natural extension of what I had been doing. I feel really blessed to have found a career and area of interest that genuinely makes me so excited to come to

Melanie Barr: work every day. Yes, it's the best. >> Serpentine is built around trust, expertise, and high-touch service. For business leaders who compete in crowded markets, how do you turn trust into a real competitive advantage?

Speaker 2: >> In our business, in the jewelry business in general, trust is really paramount to everything that we do. Trust is not something that you can just put an ad out for. It comes from an authenticity that you see if you're following the brand on Instagram, if you're going on their website, if you're seeing the pieces that they make. Ultimately, if you work with them, you have to be really pleased with the experience and feel you've been given a good price and good service. My business started out as a word-of-mouth business. It was in definitely a very crowded space. The people that I had worked with and the clients I had amassed from over the years were able to tell people really positive things about me. It happened organically and then I was able to start working on the content to back it up. I feel these days the most direct line to consumers to build trust is social medium you use. We use mostly Instagram because that's where most of our client base is engaging.

Melanie Barr: >> And I'm sure with AI and the way tech is going, trust is becoming so important. When you get a client and they have a good experience that they're going to come back again because we want to feel that, especially in fine jewelry.

Speaker 2: >> Yes. We could talk for hours about AI. It's changed our business in addition to the many other areas of industry in the world with AI and with frankly just reviews and more transparency behind businesses. It is really important that you keep a good name for yourself. Reputation is all you have. If you squander that with one person, it can be a real deal breaker for many people.

Melanie Barr: >> It's so true and people remember customer service because today we're getting so little. Many founders assume growth means reaching more people. You have built a business around deeper relationships with the right clients. How do you decide when to prioritize scale versus depth?

Speaker 2: >> I would say that is probably the number one obstacle of what I'm facing right now in the business. The whole premise of Serpentine Jewels was to provide people with a personal jewelry experience, to have a business that's based upon one person, the service that one person gives to the client is very hard. There are only so many hours in my day, clients that I can work with. Most recently focusing on this more, trying to take myself out of situations where I'm not needed and a lot of this is on the back end, on the operational end. My focus is on keeping the business as personal as it's always been. I've had to really hire very well for this. I've thought a lot about this very carefully.

Speaker 2: There are people that I need to be involved who are exceptional and can do the things that I don't really have time to do, whether it's with design or quality control, people who can take ownership over the areas that I used to be involved in. I've hired really well for the past year and a half has been a major turning point for me. I've had to realize I have to relinquish control. I can't be part of every decision and so hiring people that I really trust and to be molded, learn from me and how I like things done has been pivotal.

Melanie Barr: >> And I would think it would be team members with a mix of operations and systems in place too to help you to be able to go out and run the business and be the trust person because I'm sure people come back to you because they

Speaker 2: trust you. >> Yes, and I do have to especially at the beginning of the business I had to wear so many different hats, whether it was doing the accounting, which I did it for the first three years of the business, which is so funny because I would not say that accounting was ever my strong suit in college, but everything from the financial side of it to inventory to making sure that pieces were properly made, the right stones were selected. I felt like it was so important at the beginning in order to make pieces to the standard that I would want them to be made. I've hired experts in all of those different areas now. I've been able to take a major deep breath over the past, I don't know, I would say six months to a year that there are other people involved who can make decisions for me I usually agree with. If I don't, then I'm really glad they at least tried to course correct from there.

Melanie Barr: >> When you sold Charm & Chain, what did going through that acquisition teach you about building a company with long-term value rather than simply building for

Speaker 2: revenue? >> When I sold Charm & Chain, it was a business that was based upon a high volume, low price product. And what that meant, especially when we had investors and a board, it meant that we constantly had to be churning out results, getting bigger and bigger and more and more sales. That was a rat race that I did not want to be a part of after stepping out from that company. I remember saying to my husband one day, no matter what I do next, I don't want to manage people. I want to work with only clients. I don't want to work with any other outside people. I never want to have a boss again. I never want to feel like someone is trying to make the decisions that I feel like I should be making for the business. I've been able to think about that a lot as I started and grew Serpentine.

Melanie Barr: >> It's so great that you had that experience early and that you were successful and that you were able to sell it and that now you can build your business in the way that you want to and that has to feel like such a freedom.

Speaker 2: >> For sure. My background is in gemology. I became what's called a graduate gemologist back in 2008. I took a jewelry design course and I was ready to go into the fine jewelry world. I didn't have any prior experience. I knew I had the passion. I'd been pursuing it on the side when I was working. Another lesson that I learned from that first experience of building Charm & Chain and selling it, I need to be extremely passionate about the product that I'm working with. By the end of that, I had really lost my interest in costume jewelry. I had never really planned on going into costume jewelry to begin with. If you recall, in 2008 the economy had collapsed. Really no one was buying fine jewelry. It would have been a terrible time to enter the industry.

Fashion jewelry opportunity

Speaker 2: However, there was this huge appetite for big, funky, artistic, cool fashion jewelry. I felt like I saw an opportunity there that was too large to ignore. Pivoted. Even though I had been planning on going into fine jewelry, I took that business opportunity instead and I think it was for sure the right one for me at the time. As I realized fashion jewelry is not end all for me. I really love gemstones and that's what I want to do. I want to work with gemstones all day long, have it be a huge component of what I do on a daily basis. So I've structured my company based on that. I was able to during the course of my time with Charm & Chain start a side business as an engagement ring consultant. They say these days everyone has side hustles. I had a side hustle for my own company. I worked as an engagement ring consultant. It was very cool. No one was really doing it. Usually you just walk into a a to buy an engagement ring or you work with a private jeweler. People saw me as a go-to trusted resource. I had a lot of friends at the time who were getting engaged. Their boyfriends would call me and they'd say, I have no idea what to get Catherine for our engagement. Can you help me? I would help them go to the big box stores like Tiffany and Harry Winston and I would also take them to 47th Street. I started learning the business that way. One of the things that I saw was just that there was this white space in between both experiences that enabled me to tailor the type of jewelry that I wanted to make with Serpentine. I pivoted back to fine jewelry and I will never leave again.

Melanie Barr: That was another huge learning for me. >> An engagement ring is such an important decision. I can see why there would be a need for that. Women have different tastes. There's different things we like and it's hard to figure that out. It's not always an easy experience and I love talking to leaders like you who grow successful businesses and maybe wake up one day and say, I've grown this. I can keep doing this. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to wake up and this be my everyday life. And we all make changes, but sometimes when we build those things, we feel like we can't pivot or maybe we shouldn't pivot. So good for you for making that leap to move on to something that you love waking up to do everyday and giving yourself that permission to make that

Speaker 2: change. >> Thank you. It was a hard one to make. I knew in my heart that it was right. I just went for it.

Melanie Barr: >> And I saw one of your Instagram posts where you explained the engagement ring

Speaker 2: starting with the diamond and then building around it and I loved that. It's interesting. You don't think so much unless you're a jeweler. You don't think so much about the entire process. >> Of course not. And I think the reason for that is because for the past many years you would buy an engagement ring off the rack, already completed in a store. You would adjust your own expectations to what was in a display case. Whereas now because there are people like me out there in the world working as this personal jeweler to people who are shopping for an engagement ring, most people don't realize how many little nuances go into building an engagement ring or building really any piece of jewelry. Starts with a diamond, of course. Once you choose the diamond, then a lot of people just say am I done? And the answer is definitely not. The setting is complicated. It needs to suit the person both from a design perspective and also just a practicality standpoint. There are a lot of behind the scenes things people obviously don't see, but making a piece of jewelry, custom or not, is quite complicated.

Melanie Barr: >> Yeah, it's interesting. I also saw uh when I was looking at your socials, the mix of new versus older jewelry versus vintage jewelry is the word I'm looking

Speaker 2: for. >> Yeah.

Melanie Barr: >> New jewelry versus vintage jewelry. I have mixing I actually have a ring that my grandmother gave me that I just pulled out and I've started wearing it because it reminds me of her. >> How special is that to have a bespoke piece of jewelry that once belonged to your grandma now belongs to you and you can put your own memories and milestones and emotions into this piece takes on a completely different meaning. Vintage has been a huge category for us over the

Speaker 2: past two years. When I started Serpentine, I didn't think that we would be in the vintage business. I realized something pretty quickly when I started this business, which is that women don't really collect in silos anymore. They don't have one designer that they go to where they get all of their pieces. Very few people are wearing all David Yurman all the time. They're mixing and they're matching and they're bringing in contemporary design with older pieces with bracelets that their kids give them. I find that to be compelling just in terms of expressing your own style with your jewelry. As I saw a need to accommodate people like that, I focused a little bit more on the vintage aspect.

Speaker 2: Sometimes vintage is just completely unrecreatable. That's the beauty of it in many cases and the way people made things back in the day was very different. Many people are drawn to the allure of vintage and the fact that it had a story has lived a number of lives before it came into your hands. There's so many different types of eras, styles that we can work with because women don't necessarily shop only within one style. Very few people, even our biggest vintage collectors come to us and say, I only want to wear Art Deco pieces because they don't. They want to mix Art Deco with Victorian, more modern sculptural pieces. As we continue to refine our product offering from collection, our ready-to-wear collection, I realized that vintage would meet a need that we were not able to in our everyday designs. We brought on an expert in the field and she came from Sotheby's. She was in the auction world for many years, so has so much knowledge about the space, but also incredible taste over time has really come to learn the aesthetic of our brand. The amount of growth that this category has had for us has surprised even me and I had very high hopes for it.

Melanie Barr: >> It's so interesting. I don't want to wear the same thing, all the same jewelry. I want to mix it up and I'm finding that jewelry, especially fine jewelry is meaningful to me and if I have fine jewelry that I don't absolutely love, that isn't meaningful, I think, well, I don't necessarily need to keep this if I'm never going to wear it. I'd rather have something that I find absolutely love that I want to wear every day.

Speaker 2: >> Most women feel exactly the same way that you do.

Melanie Barr: >> In a business where founders' taste, judgment, and relationships are part of

Speaker 2: the value, how do you grow without making yourself the bottleneck?

Speaker 2: >> It is certainly a problem for me and it has been over the years. I really did have to hire people that I trusted enough to take over certain aspects of the company and I'm so happy that I did obviously because I no longer have to be the one who has to sign off on every single thing, especially if you have OCD like I do and you're a perfectionist and you want everything that is an output from the company to be exactly to your liking and your tone of voice, It takes up a lot of time. I was a lesson that I had to learn eventually, but it took me a number of years to actually do so. I remember someone saying, Ellie, delegate. And I was like, I do delegate. And then I realized, no, I don't delegate. After that, I've really been trying. It's an active goal of mine every day in order to protect my time to figure out what I can pass on to someone

Melanie Barr: else. >> And I see how it's harder in your industry. It's such a trust business. So I see how that delegation is harder and it's great that you started your business and grew it in the way that you wanted to and did everything in the beginning. I'm sure that helps with

Speaker 2: delegation because you learned the way you wanted things done along the way.

Speaker 2: >> I brought in a consultant maybe five years ago to come in and refine a lot of the operational processes in our business that weren't really quite running the right way. And that was extremely helpful because we helped come up with systems for everything that we do. And we now have actually have an

Melanie Barr: organized structure in place, which has been incredibly important.

Melanie Barr: >> How are you using AI inside your business? And where do you believe business leaders should be careful not to automate the very thing that

Speaker 2: customers value most? >> First of all, I am such an AI proponent. I've come across a number of people in my industry who are so anti-AI. To me, it's not going away. It has saved me a lot of time. That is exciting to me. We are finding uses for AI in many different ways on both the creative side of the business, the business side of the business. To give you an example, for the creative side, a client often will come to us with an idea that they have. They can't quite articulate what it is. They have something in mind, but it just can't quite be crystallized. Most people can't draw. Getting the information from a client's head to our design team can be difficult. I do find that a lot of our clients are now coming to us with AI pieces that they've designed. While it is not helpful at all from a modeling or a technical perspective because an AI can generate a photo of what something could look like.

Speaker 2: They're not going to be able to know how that piece should be made. That's where we need a human aspect to be involved there, but an AI image can actually give us something to look at together, say to the client, what is it that you love about this? And then our team swoops in and brings the design expertise, practical knowledge, the stones work together, how the piece will feel also from an operational standpoint. One of the things that we've been able to do primarily within our CRM, we've been using AI to stay organized around client events, so birthdays, anniversaries, important dates, the last correspondence we've had with them. Like I was saying before, for me, the biggest opportunity with AI is just giving us all more time to focus on what we need to focus on.

Speaker 2: And for me, I need to focus on my clients, exploring ideas of my own creatively, and to just be able to get time back has been amazing.

Melanie Barr: >> I'm sure it does help with the creative process because creative process is hard

Speaker 2: to verbally explain. >> Exactly. It gives us a starting point. Our designers are amazing, but they can't read people's minds. I found that more and more people, I would say once a day, someone comes in with an AI printout of what they're thinking on a really high level, and it makes our

Melanie Barr: conversations so much more productive. >> All that you are building and have

Speaker 2: built, how do you make sure that you're finding and living your joy outside of your business? >> This job is my life. I have a husband and two kids, many friends. The business to me is also like my child. I find so much joy truly in being able to work doing something that I love. I spend a lot of time working on weekends, meeting clients on weekends, and of course fitting in my family so that I feel like I'm spending great moments with my kids and my husband. I would say that for me, we're not at the end of the day saving lives. I care deeply about my work. Every challenge doesn't need to become major crisis. I really want to make beautiful things, laugh with the people around me, enjoy what we're building. I personally am trying to get better about pausing when something goes well and just acknowledging, thank you universe for this opportunity, making this go in a way that I wanted to go. Often it goes in a way that I don't want it to go, but many times that ends up becoming a

Melanie Barr: blessing in disguise. >> So true. Thank you for that reminder to enjoy the small moments, even taking saying I'm going to celebrate with a cup of tea or I'm going to celebrate this moment with a walk outside around my office. Even those small moments can make such a big difference. And thank you for making beautiful jewelry for women and the world. Please share with

Speaker 2: us how and where we can find you. >> You can find us on our Instagram. It's at serpentine_jewels. You can also find us via our website, serpentinejewels.com. And there you will find pieces that we make that are available now, vintage pieces that are available now, pieces that we made in the past for inspiration for your next piece. I really would recommend to someone who is looking for a piece of jewelry to come in and not have too many preconceived notions of what they want coming into it. We often lead off into a completely different direction. It's always exciting for me to see where things go. Personally, you asked about finding joy. I find so much joy in helping my clients get a piece that feels so uniquely them and so beautiful to their eye. I just love being part of those moments. I love being able to spread beauty and light in this world. Jewelry means a lot to a lot of people. It can be a marker of happy times, sad times, everything in between.

Speaker 2: One of the only things that we leave after we've departed this earth are jewelry that we wore every day. I wear my grandmother's bangles every single day, and I always picture her walking around, having them clank together.

Speaker 2: Every time I hear them clank together, I always think of my grandmother. And there' are millions of other stories like that, but jewelry really means something to a lot of people. It's not just a pretty thing. It's something that indicates a chapter in their life and where they were and what it all represents. If you can make a bespoke piece where you really get to choose every single thing that goes into the design, to me it feels even more special. We have great collections that are ready to wear as well for people who want the experience of seeing something, trying it on, and falling in love with it.