Admiring her grandmother’s jewelry designs from a young age, Frasier Sterling has created a jewelry line that’s loved by all from Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid to the decked out girls sitting next to you on the M train—not bad for a 27-year-old from Houston, Texas.

Meet Frasier Sterling

Tell us about your latest collection. 

The collection is called Tropicana—it’s just very fun. All of our collections aren’t too serious and always a little bit sexy. We do four every year and then I do infusions here and there.

When did you start designing  jewelry? Have you always loved it? 

My grandmother was a jewelry designer and is completely my inspiration. She was a jewelry designer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I literally grew up in the business. She was designing when I was little and doing trade shows—my mom did all of her sales and my grandfather ran her company. I was really immersed in this world from a very young age and it was always around me. It’s really cool because my grandmother’s business back then was exactly what my business is now. She was on the cover of magazines and sold to all of the big stores and celebrities were wearing her stuff—I mean, Paula Abdul was wearing it!

Do you remember the first thing you made? 

I was about seven when I started making jewelry and I’d make these little beaded chokers because I loved working with stones. My grandmother had so many beautiful beads and stones, so I started off making jewelry for all of my cousins, aunts, mom, and grandmother.

I have lots of little cousins and we would all spend the night at my grandparent’s house on the weekend, and I would dress them all up. My grandmother had this box of scarves, and at the time we were so little that we could literally wrap them around our bodies as dresses. I would make halter tops, skirts, whatever, and I’d put everyone in jewelry. They had this winding staircase I would use to put on a full blown fashion show, probably with Britney Spears playing in the background.

Did you always know you wanted to be a jewelry designer? 

No, I actually always wanted to be a doctor, but I made jewelry on the side and always got compliments. As I got older, I wasn’t as interested in being a doctor. My boyfriend at the time said, “You should start a line. Everybody compliments the stuff that you make and you would make so much money—you might as well try it.” I was a college student at the time and he helped me photograph around 100 pieces.

Were they all one-of-a-kind designs? 

Yeah, I whipped them up  I had no idea what my cost was, so I was just making up prices like, “Oh this looks like it would be $100.” Actually, I started off making everything between $100 and $1000, because I loved stones and metals, and all of that so my stuff was quite expensive at first. He helped me put this line sheet together—I literally put it in a word document, attached it to an email, and sent it to all of the stores I shopped at and a lot of them bought it. Then I had a reorder business, and the next thing I knew, I had a full blown operation.

What was it like starting your own business? There can be so many logistical steps that come with that. 

When I started, I had no idea what my cost of goods was, I had no idea what a margin was, I had no idea how to operate a business at all. So I ended up hiring my sister and at the end of it all because I had so many orders. But I wasn’t making any money because I had no idea what my time was worth or how to mark up anything. Before I knew it, I had so many orders that I literally couldn’t keep up—my sister and I were staying up all night. I literally had blisters, I still have blisters!

Ouch! So where did you go from there? What was the next step? 

My uncle watched the entire business evolve and he’s had several very incredible businesses. He saw me with a stack of orders and I didn’t even know what to do with myself at this point. He just said, “Ok, let me help you. We can raise venture capital and we can make this a real thing.” I had no idea what that even meant, but decided to go with it. So he got involved, we pitched it to one venture capital firm, and they were in.

You already had the clientele, so it was really just building the infrastructure—that must have been an easy sell. 

Yes, but one of the contingencies was that we made jewelry under $100. So we changed from working with precious metals and semi-precious stones to doing what we’re doing now, which is mostly working with metals that are gold-plated, brass, or Swarovski crystals. Once I started making less expensive jewelry, it allowed me to have collections and do more fun and kitschy things.

What do you find is the hardest part about being an entrepreneur? 

To be completely honest with you, the hardest part is that I seem very social, but really I like to be alone. It’s also been an adjustment for me to be in an office with a huge crowd of people everyday—I love my team, but managing people is just hard sometimes.

It is—you go from having this project you’ve been working so hard on by yourself and letting other people in can be tough.

I mean, I love everyone. I’m so lucky, I have the most incredible team ever. But it’s definitely been an adjustment, especially when it comes to design. If you could see this office on a week when I’m designing, everything is everywhere, there’s zero organization to it. It’s just colors everywhere, beads that look cute next to each other, and fabrics laid out all over the place—it’s mayhem. I’m used to being able to lay it out all over my living room to get into a zone for a week straight and not speaking to anyone the whole time. But there are other things now, like numbers, margins, and cost of goods. There are so many other distractions when I’m designing, so that’s been a big adjustment for me.

What’s up next? 

Actually my uncle sent me an email yesterday and said, “It seems that you’re very good at designing clothes, maybe you should think about doing that more often.” We’re thinking of designing more apparel, but what’s really, really soon? Our back to school collection.