Studs’ 39-year-old founder ditched her law career to launch the adult version of Claire’s

Fortune

Anna Harman, a former lawyer and Bridgewater asset manager, is a mom of two who has remained at the helm of Studs since she founded it in 2019.

Transcript

00:00 So this is a Studs earscape. It's our signature yellow ear.

00:05 It has a wide assortment of both piercings to illustrate the types of piercings you could get at Studs,

00:11 as well as all of our fashion jewelry.

00:14 And we actually use these to help people see both the jewelry,

00:17 as well as the types of piercings they could get.

00:20 Hi, my name is Anna Harmon. I'm 39 years old.

00:23 I'm the CEO and co-founder of Studs, and this is my secret to success.

00:27 I grew up in Westchester, right outside of New York City. My father was an architect.

00:31 My mom was an executive and a big role model for me.

00:33 I went to school at the same school for my entire time from kindergarten to 12th grade,

00:38 and then I went to Princeton University, and I studied English.

00:41 Right after I graduated from college, I went to Boston University for law school.

00:45 I had always known that I wanted to go to law school and potentially be a lawyer.

00:49 I was a mutual fund formation lawyer, which is unfortunately about as boring as it sounds,

00:53 and was part of the reason I stopped practicing law.

00:55 I knew I never wanted to be a partner at a law firm, so that was never my goal.

00:59 And then when I left law, being a lawyer, I went on to go work at an asset manager called Bridgewater.

01:05 So I spent a little under five years at Bridgewater.

01:08 I then left and I went to a startup that was funded and founded by a former, very senior Bridgewater person.

01:13 We actually sold that business after about two years, and I went to work at Walmart's incubator

01:19 and spent another about two years there, primarily working on a business

01:22 that was a text-to-shopping business called Jet Black.

01:24 So I started thinking about studs because I had a sort of strange piercing experience while working at Jet Black.

01:31 I went to get another piercing about five or six years ago now, a second piercing on my left ear,

01:37 and I went to a very fancy piercing parlor downtown, and they told me I would have to wait about two hours,

01:43 and I probably would have spent $500 or $750, and I ended up going to the tattoo parlor.

01:49 And I had a really good experience piercing-wise at the tattoo parlor.

01:52 It was done healthily and safely with a needle, and I really liked my piercer, but I didn't like the jewelry,

01:56 and it was still expensive, and I was very personally out of place at the tattoo parlor.

02:01 And so then I actually started to do research to understand, well, what had happened to the mall brands

02:05 that I remembered going to when I was growing up.

02:08 And what I learned was there really isn't a place to go until studs,

02:13 once you've graduated from those mall brands, if you want to get a piercing on your ear,

02:18 done with a needle, with a cute selection of earrings, that concept didn't exist.

02:22 Nobody had created it, and so I felt like, well, I would have wanted to go there,

02:26 so what if that were the business that I were to start?

02:28 When you think of the mall brands that you visit, the first thing I think you think of is

02:32 they're meant for younger customers, and particular, Claire's really self-describes as targeted at tweens.

02:38 Studs' core demographic is 18 to 35, and our median age is actually 27.

02:44 And so everything we think about in terms of the store experience, the store design,

02:48 how we actually want people to interact with the brand is for an older customer

02:53 that Claire's was really never designed for.

02:55 To me, we were filling a hole in the market.

02:58 Taking us back to November of 2019, we're opening the first studs studio in Nolita.

03:03 I am five months pregnant, I guess, or four months pregnant, thereabouts.

03:07 And it was interesting, you know, when you start a startup,

03:10 and it's a physical experience, meaning it's a store, right?

03:14 At some level, it's real, like, this is gonna work or it's not gonna work.

03:18 And what was fascinating was it worked from day one.

03:20 We had lines out the door at the Nolita studio the first weekend.

03:26 And so that was really validating for Lisa and I, because when you are selling products online,

03:31 nobody knows how many products you're selling, right?

03:34 On day one, you might sell nothing. You might sell two, right, units of whatever it is you're making.

03:38 For, if you start a store, people know if people are in the store with you.

03:43 And so we felt really lucky and inspired that the thing we had created was generating both that much buzz

03:49 that Lisa had created and that people wanted the product that we made.

03:52 Well, when we first started, you know, working in a co-working space, we funded it ourselves.

03:57 We obviously weren't spending much money on it, but we spent probably four to six months

04:01 pre-fundraise investing in the business by ourselves.

04:04 Then we went out and fundraised for our seed round in, I would say, February of 2019-ish.

04:11 We raised a little north of three million.

04:12 So COVID was really, I think, out of total left field for us.

04:16 So we had launched the first studio in November of 2019, and we had launched a second studio,

04:21 actually, in Hudson Yards in late, late February of 2020, about two weeks before, obviously, the world shut down.

04:28 And we were super lucky to have raised another round of financing right before COVID happened,

04:32 also about two weeks before the world shut down.

04:35 And so we were well-positioned financially, but obviously the business had to close for about six months.

04:41 And at the time, I was eight months pregnant, and I remember being really concerned,

04:47 one, what would happen to me, to my child, to everyone in my family's lives because of this,

04:52 but also what would happen to our business, which at the end of the day, right, post-COVID,

04:57 we were so lucky to see people come back and want to get piercings again.

05:00 But we were questioning at the beginning of COVID whether that would be true.

05:04 I think the biggest thing about the secret to success for Studs is, again, the amazing experience

05:09 that the studio team provides to customers every single day.

05:13 And so we really focus at Studs on how can we continue to enable that from our HQ office,

05:19 because the reason people like Studs is because Studs has great reviews

05:22 and because they have a great experience at Studs, and then they tell their friends.

05:25 [ Music ]

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