Being Brett
Recent FHS grad building small jewelry business with help from Christian faith
With her long, dark hair and All-American good looks, Holan Hopkins could be a model. However, this 18-year-old Farragut High School Class of 2017 graduate has more on her mind than clothes and makeup: invoices, analytics and monthly sales reports, to be exact.
Her jewelry business, “Being Brett,” started almost by accident two years ago at the end of her sophomore year.
“My look is a lot of beads, stones and tassels,” she said. “Tassels are huge right now.”
Being Brett has become very profitable, but making money isn’t the main goal. Hopkins wants women to use her jewelry as a conversation-starter. She wants the women who wear her jewelry to talk about their faith and things that really matter.
Her foray into business started overnight when she was on a trip with her mother, Kristy Hopkins, at the market [AmericasMart] in Atlanta.
“When I was there, I got to go in the jewelry section and walk around on my own and got to see retail prices versus wholesale prices,” Hopkins said. “I got to see jewelry is very cheap wholesale, depending on the type of jewelry. It popped in my head that I could have a business. I bought 10 necklaces. They probably weren’t ones I would have come home and worn. Being so new and inexperienced I chose the cheapest price thinking about resale.”
That evening Haley Hopkins, Holan’s older sister, met them for dinner.
“We were talking about names — I don’t think we used the word ‘company’ yet,” Hopkins said. “After a while she said ‘Being Brett’ and it stuck. Brett is my middle name. She’s a graphic designer and she was playing around and she created the logo on a napkin. We took the napkin back to the hotel and started playing on the computer.
“I typed in Google ‘how to create a website’ and got generic instructions. I built the website that night. I came up with the names of the products. I’m very spur of the moment — I have to do it then. It gets me in trouble sometimes.
“I think we had my website up and published in about two weeks,” she added. “Then I created an Instagram with a link to the website.”
By July 11, she had a business license and by the end of the summer had her first home show at a friend’s house with 25 guests.
“We had pink lemonade and pink and white gumballs and pink and white cupcakes,” Hopkins said. “I set all my jewelry up. I had reordered and gotten bracelets and necklaces. My No. 1 seller was a $10 gold bangle cuff with little rhinestones on it. I still have one and I won’t sell it because it was my first success product. The party went very successfully. I sold almost all my inventory.
“Going on from the party, I realized it was much bigger than I thought,” she added. “I started in debt to my parents. They gave me roughly $1,000 to start. I had to pay them that back. It took a good nine months.
“My first website was $9.99 a month. Now I’m up to $80 a month. The website I have now gathers my analytics, calculates my sales and use tax and gives me monthly reports of net and gross sales.
“I went back to market in January and I basically had brought in enough revenue to buy new inventory. I picked out a little higher-end quality in a different style with a different company.”
Hopkins said she tries to have a home show every two to three months and has also set up at three convention centers in Knoxville. Her booths have cost her $250 to $500 for a six-hour to a three-day show depending on how many people are expected.
“At my very first big show at the Expo Center [where she rented a booth for $500] I didn’t sell anything. I was definitely discouraged and didn’t ever want to do a convention center again because of how much money I lost.”
Since then, though, she’s done successful convention shows, including the recent Chocolate Fest.
“I ended up moving to Shopify, one of the biggest e-commerce platforms there is. That’s the one that tracks my analytics. But just through social media, promotional products, home shows and word of mouth — that’s how everything has kind of blown up.”
Hopkins said her real story involves her faith.
“I came to know Jesus personally through family circumstances,” she said. “I went from a financially secure family to losing almost everything. My family had just moved here from South Carolina and
I was the new girl. Being in a private Christian school at the time, it was very suffocating because of the materialism.
“Everybody asked me where I got this and that and what I was wearing to the football game — just typical surface conversations,” Hopkins added. “I was sitting in Algebra 1 and a girl had been sitting next to me and the only conversations we’d had through the year were about clothes.
“The Holy Spirit knocked me right out and said, ‘If she were to die today and she showed up before Me, could she honestly say you all had talked about anything more meaningful than clothes?’ So the whole purpose of Being Brett is when somebody asks where you got your bracelet or necklace, you have a reminder to talk about something more meaningful.”
“I pray over every order that’s sent out and everybody gets a handwritten note and gumballs,” Hopkins said. “I want girls to be reminded that they’re beautiful daughters of the King. If nobody else is praying for them, then I can lift them up to Jesus. Hopefully, that’s what sets my company apart from anybody else.”
With high school over, Hopkins said she can’t wait for her next adventure: cosmetology school. But she’s got a huge business idea in the back of her mind to go along with Being Brett and with all the business experience she has under her belt, she’ll be sure to pull it off.
