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| First Person |
Better to Give
Joan Hornig
11/01/2007
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Move Over Paul Newman
When I first started publicizing my jewelry, I sent out emails
that said: "Move over Paul Newman." Of course, Newman’s Own has Paul Newman’s
name on the brand, and it also makes pretty good salad dressing. I didn’t have
celebrity recognition and I have always found it difficult to do self-promotion.
That said, I’m hardly a wallflower; I have a salesman’s personality when it
comes to fundraising or the cash management and hedge fund products that I used
to sell, and I was willing to keep asking people until someone said yes. I would
stand up all day and stay alert through trunk shows, and because I sold enough
jewelry through my own channels, I was able to get Bergdorf Goodman to take my
jewelry and train the sales staff there. Still, even though I can stand up in
front of 750 people and tell them to give to a cause, it’s harder to stand up in
front of 750 people and say, "Buy my product," especially when it’s a product
that is my own creation.
 But my biggest risk was just disappointment. I would have been
disappointed if it hadn’t worked, but you have to learn to live through
disappointment, especially when you have such a good life. I didn’t even have to
worry about going into debt; all I did was take my own money and use it to stock
up on inventory, hire a staff and set up the Joan B. Hornig Foundation, which
disperses the charitable gifts.
My business model is like Paul Newman’s in that it gives
profits to charity, but there is an important difference: He gives the profits
from the business, while I give the profits on each item. If a piece of jewelry
doesn’t sell, I’m eating all of the costs. Oprah is an even more interesting
model to me, though, in the way she seeks donors as partners through Oprah’s
Angel Network and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.
This idea is becoming almost like a movement. An artist who
bought my jewelry decided to have 100 percent of the profits from her paintings
go to charity. I made a speech in Nashville at a luncheon of the Women’s Fund of
the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee last year, and a gentleman in the
audience who had his own business came up to me afterward and said this had made
him start to think about philanthropy differently, and maybe we could work on a
product line together.
I would like to develop more products and give the profits to
charity. This is what I’m hoping to do with people who come to me with
partnership ideas. There should be some less-expensive products out there, but
still with high margins so that you get significant profits—small things like
bookmarks, kitchen items, maybe dog products. Certainly a line of cuff links for
men, and I would love to come out with a fragrance. After a disastrous tornado
in the Lincoln, Neb., area in 2004, local organizers were looking for private
aid. Someone there heard about me and asked me if I would donate something for a
benefit for them. They wanted something they could sell for only $10, so I
created a necklace that was a sterling silver ginkgo leaf on a leather thong.
That’s the kind of thing that I like people to reach out and ask me for.
Joan Hornig donates all profits from each piece of jewelry, such
as the leaf cuff bracelet (above).
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