Situation: The marketing team at Howard’s Inc. identified that there was a growing interest in novelty jewelry amony our customers, particularly related to holidays and seasonal styles.

Task: as the jewelry designer at Howard’s inc, I was tasked with creating a Christmas novelty collection, and a gnome collection that had options for various seasons.

Design Approach:

• To stand out in a sea of novelty jewelry (and particularly, the sea of gnome-related merchandise) in the gift industry, I decided to take a different approach to the pendant construction. I developed a multi-piece structure that allowed for movement and gave the necklaces added character.

• After some research, I drew up necklace and matching earrings designs, and collaborated with our manufacturer and adjusted the designs to keep them within our target price range and to keep manufacturing errors to a minimum.

Conclusion: These collections became instant best-sellers at Howard’s Inc, and we saw many reordered of these pieces, meaning that our end consumer loved them as well. We eventually expanded this collection and added more designs.