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Join for freePosted: Mon 6th Jul 2026
Building a successful product-based business is about resilience, storytelling and learning how to grow sustainably.
In this webinar, Jade Sammour, founder of Dainty London Jewellery, talks through her journey from a career in specialist nursing to building a multi-award-winning jewellery brand.
Gain practical insight into brand-building, wholesale growth and how to stay true to your vision while navigating the realities of entrepreneurship.
How to build a brand that people genuinely connect with
Practical strategies for growing wholesale accounts and retail partnerships
How to navigate challenges and keep moving forward
Jade is the founder and designer behind Dainty London Jewellery, a British jewellery brand inspired by nature, travel and childhood memories of the Cornish coast.
After a successful career as a children's cardiac nurse specialist, Jade followed her passion for design and launched her business.
Today, her jewellery collections are stocked by independent retailers across the UK and have been featured in leading publications including Vogue, Tatler, Stylist and The Telegraph. Her designs have also been worn by celebrities including Emeli Sandé, Kylie Minogue and Hayden Panettiere.
Jade is passionate about helping fellow founders build meaningful brands, grow sustainably and stay resilient through the challenges of entrepreneurship.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Caitriona: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona, and I'll be your host today. For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for startups and small businesses.
I'm pleased to introduce Jade Sammour, who's the founder of Dainty London Jewellery. In this session, Jade will talk you through her journey from a career in specialist nursing to building a multi-award-winning jewellery brand.
If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them at the end of the session. Today's webinar will be recorded, and we will send a follow-up email to you with the recording and further resources later today. Over to you, Jade.
Jade: Hello, and good morning or good afternoon to everybody. My name is Jade, and I run two businesses. I have a jewellery brand called Dainty London, which is dainty_london_jewellery on Instagram, and I also have a mentoring business called the Founders Atelier. That business was set up to support other female product-based business founders, teaching them the things I've learned over the years from running my jewellery brand.
A little bit about me: I'm the founder and designer of Dainty London Jewellery, and, as I said, I'm now also a business mentor at the Founders Atelier. My jewellery is inspired by nature, travel, and my Cornish heritage, growing up in Cornwall – coastal memories and treasures from under the sea that have been washed up onto the beach after a big storm.
I'm actually a former children's cardiac nurse specialist. I worked at Great Ormond Street for around 12 years, ending up climbing the ladder into a senior role, heading up and working with children undergoing heart and lung transplants. So I was a specialist nurse in that area, and, as you can imagine, it was a very stressful job.
Instead of going home and sitting in front of the TV after a really long shift, I needed to keep my mind busy as a distraction, so I started making jewellery at the kitchen table. Then, back in 2018, I had my first baby, and my husband came to me and said, "Here is £5,000 of our savings – go and make it into a business." That's where Dainty London was launched.
In that first year of launching the business, I had celebrities wearing the jewellery. Idris Elba came up to me at London Fashion Week asking to buy a piece, which he then gifted to his now wife, who tagged herself on Instagram at a party in LA and then tagged me – and that was it. My jewellery brand blew up.
Now the jewellery brand is multi-award-winning. We've won lots of awards within the UK jewellery industry, and we're stocked in loads of different independent retailers across the UK. We've been featured in Vogue and Stylist, and Forbes wrote a feature on me last year. It's also been worn by the likes of Emily Sandé and Kylie Minogue on the red carpet at the Oscars.
It's been a huge turnaround, from saving children's lives to creating, making, selling and building a brand. I completely understand where other product-based founders are coming from, because I've been there. That's why I've now set up the Founders Atelier, a mentoring business where I help and support founders who are further behind in their journey – teaching them what I've learned along the way, opening up my black book of contacts and press, sharing awards to apply for, how to write press releases, and so on.
So, the session overview for today: we're going to cover how to build a brand that people genuinely connect with, talk about practical ways you can grow wholesale and retail partnerships, and look at how to navigate challenges and keep moving forward in the business.
What is a strong brand, really? It's not just about your product – it's about selling an emotion, a feeling, and a meaning. As I said, my jewellery is inspired by my coastal memories as a little girl growing up in Bude, North Cornwall. My dad was a fisherman, and he used to go out to sea for days at a time, coming back in with his lobster pots.
As a child, I used to imagine treasures being pulled from the bottom of the ocean and hauled up into those lobster pots. That's why I make jewellery using Victorian-style gemstone settings, then add a detail called granulation – a bubbly texture that mimics the look of barnacles. I also only use ocean-coloured gemstones: blues, greens and similar tones. It's all about selling that emotion and that feeling – I want my customers to feel like they're buying a little drop of the ocean every time they place an order. You have to be consistent in your story, your visuals and your tone.
Really importantly, people buy from people. You can try to be a faceless brand – I tried this myself. I didn't want my face to be part of it; I just wanted the brand to sell. But in this day and age, especially with an Instagram-driven lifestyle, people buy from people. Being visible as the founder and owner of a brand, talking about your products, is so important. People buy connection – they don't just buy jewellery.
The next bit is how to build a real connection. This isn't just about talking on social media; it's about telling a story. People buy the emotion, as I've said, so tell your origin story – why you exist matters. I've told you I was an NHS nurse and pivoted away, and that's now plastered all over my website. That sells an emotion, that sells a story, and people relate to it.
Be visually consistent across all your touch points, and show the behind-the-scenes real process. On my website, daintylondon.com, you'll see photos throughout of me actually at the workbench working on the pieces. I use first person a lot in my product descriptions – I don't want it to read like "this is a jewellery piece inspired by the ocean." Instead, it's more humble: "This is why I designed this, I love this piece, it reminds me of this." Again, it's selling that emotion to the customer, and speaking like a human, not a brand voice.
The reality of running a jewellery brand is that it's not linear growth – you don't just launch, and that's it. You will hit cash flow pressure, you'll hit doubt, you'll hit impostor syndrome, and you will probably have setbacks. Problems are normal, and they're not personal failures – learning from them is what matters. Every time a problem comes up, this is always why it's good to have a mentor, so you can work through these issues together and get the reassurance you need, or have a good community of networking individuals you can approach and share your issues with.
Keep moving forward, and focus on what is working, not everything all at once. What I mean by that is: if something is going really well – if your social media is growing quickly and generating sales – attach your shop to Instagram, if you haven't already, so you have a catalogue built in on the back end.
Find out who your customer demographic is. Really dive into it: who is that person buying your product, where will you find them, what's their name, where do they shop, what do they drink, are they a wine drinker, do they go to coffee shops in the morning? For me, I've been able to really deep-dive and find my customer demographic. Because my jewellery sits at a slightly higher price point – it's more ethical, sustainable metals, recyclable packaging, fair trade gold – my customer is a woman, aged 35 to 50, who I find shopping on social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
TikTok isn't relevant to me; that demographic is more like 13 to 21, and that's not who's buying my jewellery. So I focus all my attention on speaking to my actual customer in that demographic. Build systems, not just hustle: make sure you've got things in the back end of your website if you're a product business. Have a chat app added in, if you can, so if a customer needs advice there and then, they can press the chat button, it comes through to your phone like a messaging app, and you can speak to them live.
Ask for help earlier than feels comfortable. Talking about mentorship again, I wish that back when I first started, I'd had a mentor who had sat in the same seat – a founder themselves who could direct me. Instead, I worked with lots of different mentors who came from department store buying backgrounds and similar, but who didn't know the here and now of setting up and running a business. That's why I've gone back to the Founders Atelier – because I've been there, done it, and got the T-shirt, so I can guide, help and support other newer founders along that route.
Keep showing up, even when your momentum dips. That might mean planning ahead using platforms like Buffer or Plann for your social media, so that even when you know your sales dip mid-month, when people have less flexibility in their income, you keep showing up on social media and in other places, like email newsletters.
For a closing thought: strong brands are built slowly. Don't expect to launch a business and have it take off straight away – it will take time, and you want it to take time, otherwise you'll get burnout. Relationships matter more than quick wins, and what I mean by that is building relationships over time. If you find the name of a magazine editor and you're a product business, keep in contact with them – send them a product, a Christmas gift, anything like that. Build the relationship, follow them on social media, like and engage with their posts.
It's the same with stockists. If there's a store in your local town, or anywhere you'd like your product to be featured, make contact, keep in touch, and build a relationship with the store owner. Once you're up and running, you can build momentum, then launch and pitch when you're more confident in the business. Consistency beats intensity – you don't need to launch all your products in one go. You can do drops, limited editions, VIP-only drops – just make your customers feel special, feel seen, and feel connected to you as a founder and business owner.
Even with something as simple as thank-you cards when you're sending product out, add handwritten notes into the boxes, or create cards with your signature saying "thanks so much for supporting my small business – this has paid for swimming lessons for my children," or similar. Anything humble and relatable helps people relate to you and feel more emotionally connected.
So, thank you for taking part. As I said, I'm Dainty London Jewellery, and I also have the Founders Atelier, which is the_founders_atelier on Instagram. I'm always happy to answer any of your questions or to connect.
Caitriona: Thank you so much, Jade. If anyone has any questions, please do put them in the chat. In the meantime, I have a question here – I think you touched on it during your presentation, but how did you identify your ideal customer or target audience, and has that customer changed over time?
Jade: Absolutely. When I started the business back in 2018, my customer was different to who the customer is now. As the collections have grown and my price points have increased, what I've realised is that the women who were following or engaging with my brand back then have also developed and increased their price points as their professional lives have moved on.
When you're about a year into the business, send out an email newsletter – you can do this through Mailchimp or similar – or create a survey through SurveyMonkey and send it out to as many people as you can. If you're doing pop-ups or anything similar, ask people to fill it in, and it will give you a rough idea of who your demographic is. You can ask random questions about their social life, whether they're married – it will just give you a picture of who that person is.
I've been able to identify that mine is a woman: a working professional with disposable income, aged 35 to 50. She likes luxury holidays, and she does yoga. I know so much about who she is that I'm able to target my business in the spaces where I'll find her.
For example, she likes drinking nice coffee, so I know I can put business cards into boutique or fancy coffee shops locally, because I know she'll be in there getting her flat white in the morning. Wine bars are another example. If you're just starting out, once you've got a rough customer demographic, you can approach a wine bar, knowing your customer drinks wine and goes for Friday drinks with friends.
Don't underestimate local promotion and advertising. What I always say to my mentees is: print off a poster, take it into the local wine bar, and ask them to put it on the back of the toilet door for a small fee, because that woman sitting there, looking up, has something to read – a QR code that takes her straight through to your website. There you are – you potentially have a new customer. Something as easy as that is about zoning in on those customers.
Caitriona: Thank you. You mentioned earlier how you've incorporated some of your story into your website. How do you decide what parts of your founder story to share publicly?
Jade: Again, it's trial and error. You don't want to give your whole story – you need something that will stand out. I'm married with three children, but everybody's got that, so that doesn't make me different. What makes me different is that I helped save children's lives, and I worked in the NHS for years, heading up heart and lung transplants. That's rare – that's my USP, and that's very different.
I also think the fact that I grew up in Cornwall in a working-class fishing family adds to it. I've brought those two elements together to make my story stand out. So, with your founder story, find the elements that are most interesting about you and give those to the public.
Caitriona: Thank you. We have a question from Ethel in the chat: Do you have any advice for finding a wholesaler to sell products?
Jade: Yes – go to trade shows. Not necessarily exhibiting at one, but you can go as a guest. There are a few near London, such as Top Drawer, and further afield, you've got Harrogate, and Spring and Autumn Fair.
Sign up and go for the day, have a look around, and you'll see all the different brands that are there. You can also see who will be attending those trade shows, so you can start making contacts with the store owners who'll be there.
Caitriona: Thank you. Another question in the chat: aside from what you've already said, how do you go beyond product, price, promotion and distribution to build relationships?
Jade: Regular email sequences. For my jewellery brand, I started with Shopify, so it's really hard to move away from it now, just because of all my SEO and everything else, so I work with Shopify and use Shopify Email. I've created lots of different flows: a customer signs up and gets 15% off as a sign-up discount, then they're joined into a flow that runs for around 40 days, with different emails a week apart.
One of those emails is about my story, another talks about how I design and the inspiration behind it, just to build connection. At the end of those flows, if customers have bought more than four pieces, they're automatically moved onto a VIP list, where they get a different flow and different discounts. If customers haven't opened an email after 70 days, they get moved onto a new flow. It's about nurturing the customers you already have and keeping them close, and not letting them slip away.
Caitriona: And another question we've had: what's your suggestion on selling high-end jewellery?
Jade: I think they mean in terms of pricing. I'm not sure if you've done a pricing course or anything like that – there's a course called Gold Dust, run by Kate Baxter, who is amazing, and she covers lots of different pricing elements.
I'd look at the cost of gold and silver at the time you're making the piece, add on your costs, and then build your profit on top of that. Make sure that whatever you're selling, you're not increasing your prices every couple of minutes because of fluctuations in gold and silver – keep it at one price. That way, if the price drops, you're making a slightly higher profit, and if it goes up, you're still making a profit, just with a narrower margin. I'd work it around that way.
Caitriona: Thank you. What skills do you think product-based founders underestimate but should develop early?
Jade: SEO. Learn SEO early – SEO is everything. If you're thinking of running ads, I'd always say social media is a shop window: you can spend £500 a month running a Facebook ad, or get a marketing company to do it all for you, but the truth is those aren't engaged shoppers – they're on their lunch break, scrolling while eating a sandwich.
If you invest your money into Google Ads or Bing instead, those are already engaged shoppers – they're already typing certain keywords into Google to find you. So someone might type in "dainty jewellery," and there I come. Learning the SEO keywords for you early on and teaching yourself SEO has really paid off for me, rather than paying a huge agency to do it for me.
Having certain keywords – dainty jewellery, female rings for small fingers, anything related to the name of your brand – own it and use it everywhere. There's a fantastic book I'd recommend; let me grab it for you. It came out this year and is phenomenal for SEO. I'd also say, as a new product founder, invest in photography.
Spend money on photography – if you've got rubbish pictures that you've taken yourself on your website, that's your shop window. If you're walking along the high street and the shop window looks terrible, you're not going into the shop, so make sure you spend the money on photography. There's a fantastic photographer I work with – her name is HJ Branding Stories, she's on Instagram, and I'd 100% recommend her.
Can I grab that book quickly? [book retrieved] This one here – it's called SEO 2026, by Adam Clark. This covers modern AI too – think of ChatGPT and AI platforms also as a search engine. People are now typing in things like "best jewellery in Essex," and you need to make sure you're showing up. This book will teach you how to do that as well.
Caitriona: That's interesting, because we had a related question in the chat: does SEO still matter in the days of AI summaries? It sounds like that book delves into it.
Jade: Absolutely – and having long-tail keywords as well. It's not just a term like "vanilla scented candle." A long-tail keyword is more drawn out, more like a phrase – something like "vanilla scented candles for spring cleaning." Longer phrases like that really work too. Blog posts as well: make sure you're writing at least two blog posts a month.
Caitriona: And another question we had was: do you allow customisation to build relationships?
Jade: Absolutely, yes. For me, as a jeweller, I offer a bespoke service – the bespoke fee is £250, and a customer might come to me and say, "I've got a ruby wedding ring I don't really like anymore, a couple of the stones are chipped around the outside – can you redesign this?" My fee for that would be £250.
Do not do the work for free – I've been there, I've done it. I've taken on customisation, drawn designs, sent them back and had to say, "Sorry, I'm actually going to work with somebody else." Your time and effort cost money, so charge for that, and do it early on.
Caitriona: How do you measure success now, compared to when you first started?
Jade: Flexible income – that's my success. I'll admit it, I'm money-driven; I love my time, and my time is precious. I've got three children, and I want to be with them, so time is one element, and financial security is the other. I'm not growing Dainty London to sell it – I'm growing it as a lifestyle business.
I want to go on nice holidays, and pay for my kids' swimming lessons, that kind of thing. When I first started, my brand was bootstrapped – I had the £5,000 my husband gave me out of our savings, and every penny was accounted for. Every penny I made on the website went straight back into the business, until it got to the point where I was making a decent profit and could buy a nice new car, and take my family on a nice holiday.
That, for me, is the success – that's where I feel the business has shifted massively. Rather than worrying about the finances, now I can enjoy them.
Caitriona: Congratulations, that sounds great. I don't see any more questions in the chat, so I think we can leave it there. Thank you so much, Jade, for your presentation today and for sharing your story, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We'll be sharing the recording and further resources in a follow-up email this afternoon. Thank you.
Jade: Thank you – nice to meet you all.
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