Kevin Chen of BERRICLE believes “You should not be afraid of failure as an entrepreneur, in fact, you must embrace it.”

“If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived” or “Failure is part of success” is how the saying goes. Most people are afraid of failure. As an entrepreneur, you should not be afraid, in fact, you must embrace it. Every successful business has failed at some point, but they did not stop which is the main key. We all feel emotionally low after something failed, that is natural and human. But how we respond to our failures is what determines our road to success.

Ihad the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Chen, an entrepreneur with extensive experience in various technologies. Between 2001 and 2006, Kevin was I.T administrator at GoodStuff LLC, where he was responsible for managing network infrastructure, security and data management. Between 2006 and 2010, he founded Prestige Network Solution Inc, where he did consulting for small businesses. At the same time, he set up e-commerce site NewOutlet.com and sold fashion jewelry and accessory. In 2011, he founded BERRICLE LLC, a lifestyle jewelry brand dedicated to attainable luxury, and has successfully established the company’s leading position in the North American market. A 5-time Inc. 5000 Honoree, BERRICLE is sharing the brilliance of cubic zirconia and sterling silver jewelry all over the US and celebrating every sparkling moment in people’s lives.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Before I started an ecommerce business, I was helping small businesses with their computer networking. I had to visit client locations and did a lot of talking. Over time, I no longer wanted to do consulting because I preferred to work on technology than meeting people. At that time, my wife was selling fashion jewelry on EBay. She sold a few pieces a day in the beginning and her sales were up month over month. That’s when I realized that I should help my wife to grow her online business. Since then, we have been working together to grow ecommerce until now.

Can you share your story of Grit and Success? First can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

I am sure that every business had hard times and many failures at the beginning. One of my many hard times was not being able to afford to hire someone. I knew that I was supposed to be surrounded by a team of smart people if I want to succeed. Hiring someone is not cheap, especially the smart one. So, I ended up learning all sorts of things like how Ebay works, how to take nice product photos, how to communicate with customers, how to pack & ship and many more. The worst part is waiting in line at Post Office to drop off packages since we didn’t have scheduled pickup. For a couple of years, there was no employee and just me and my wife.

Luckily, at some point, we were able to afford to hire someone. I thought hiring would be easy, do some interviews and pay them good. Turned out it was not that simple and easy. Many job applicants had an impressive resume. So, I hired them based on what it said on their resume. Then, I realized that they didn’t have the right skills or enough experiences or lack of team collaborations or worst not doing their job at all. In order for a company to succeed, I believe that everyone must contribute to their maximum capacity, doesn’t matter what their job positions are. I have zero tolerance on slacking off at work. Sometimes employee attention and focus may change over time. An employee may work hard and try to impress the boss or supervisor at the beginning. After a few months or years, an employee may tend to lose interest and focus on their responsibilities.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

I always knew that running business comes with pros & cons and ups & downs. When things got so hard or frustrated me, I stopped working and tried to forget about it completely. Sometimes, I didn’t go to work and didn’t check emails for a week until my mind was clear. I am not exactly sure where I got the drive to continue, it is always inside me. I guess that is one of the common things among entrepreneur. I know what I want to achieve and where I want to be. I am competitive and ambitious. I guess that drives me every day.

So, how are things going today? How did Grit lead to your eventual success?

After many years of trials and errors, things are heading in the right direction but we still have a long journey ahead of us. Every day, we research, we plan, we test and we execute. Next day, we repeat those steps. Bottom line, keep on doing it and master it along the way.

Was there a time when you thought of stopping? Why didn’t you?

I’ve never thought of stopping even during the hardest time because quitting is not a solution to me.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I made a lot of mistakes when I started a business and I am not sure there was a funny mistake.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

As you know, the online market is getting crowded and competitive. Each year, there are more sellers and startup brands. Technology is getting easier to use, so anybody can set up an online shop within a few days. In order to stand out, we did so many things but pricing was not one of them. Compare with other sellers, our prices are higher than average, simply because we try to focus on quality. In the beginning, we were selling at much lower prices but the quality was poor and many customers were not happy about it and we had a higher return rate. So, we decided to focus more on quality and price. We manufacture our jewelry with more experienced and skillful jewelers and use better grade cubic zirconia stones. Everyday, we get acclaim from customers telling us how gorgeous our jewelry is and how beautiful it makes them feel.

Another important thing is the customers. We want our customers to be 100% happy with their online shopping experience with us. At every customer touch point including pre or post sales, we try everything and anything to make them a loyal customer which I believe the key to success. We constantly re-design our site to be more user-friendly, easy to find something, high-resolution product photos, live models and many more. We normally respond to customer emails within 15–30 minutes during office hours. By our return policy, customers are supposed to return items in original new condition for a refund. However, we made an exception for first-time customer and we took a loss.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

I strongly suggest taking some time off a busy schedule and exercise or meditation regularly. After long hours of sitting down and do the stressful job at the office, I exercise for 1 hour to release stress and to think through some of the concerns that might be clogging up my mind. At the end of the workout, my mind is clear, less tired and sometimes suddenly I know what I should do on things that I couldn’t decide before.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I can’t thank my wife, Amy enough. As my business partner and life partner, the dual responsibilities can be quite stressful at times. Especially at the beginning of our business, I would always bring work back home and certainly didn’t do a good job balancing work and personal life. I appreciate what Amy has done to set a role model for the rest of us. As a mother and female entrepreneur, she is unapologetically perseverant, positive and diligent. The head of our merchandising team, she has built a reputation for the superior quality of our jewelry. I’ve witnessed how she turned her passion into something far more significant and impactful. It’s immensely inspiring and a constant reminder for me to keep pushing further.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Most of our customers are female. To raise awareness of breast cancer, we have worked with a non-profit organization breastcancer.org. We design breast cancer awareness jewelry and donates 20% of proceeds.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started my company” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

1. Satisfied customers are key to success and keep them coming. The cost of acquiring a new customer is getting expensive and make sure the customer is satisfied and happy with not only the very first order but also lifetime orders. For most business, the profit margin on the customer’s first order is low due to marketing costs and discounts offered. Focus on customer’s lifetime value, not just first order.
2. Surround yourself with the right leaders as soon as you can afford. If you have a budget or can afford it, hire the right leaders because they can bring expertise to the table and can deliver the positive results quickly with minimum failures. When I started the company, I had no choice but to do most of the jobs simply because I couldn’t afford to hire anybody. But whenever I had a budget, I kept hiring and delegate tasks gradually.
3. Invest in technology and know your data. In my opinion, technology is so pervasive that is has become integral to a successful business. Technology is reshaping how a business runs. If you look at today’s successful companies such as amazon, uber, airbnb, they all invest heavily in technology. Human is slow. Human makes mistakes. Tasks which previously took hours or days for humans can now be executed in minutes with technology. A modern business should run at the speed of light. If you’re not fast, your competitors will be. Every day we are faced with hundreds of questions like who is our customers, are they happy with our products, which products are the best selling, how customers reach our site, what is conversion rate, churn rate or return rate, are we profitable for this month, how is this month doing compared to last month and etc. Without the right technology, we are wasting time and resources on collecting data from different sources and trying to make sense of it. With the right technology in place, the answers we are looking for are just a few clicks away.
4. Automate everything. This is my favorite part. I love automation. Since we started using automation in 2017, we have saved countless hours of tedious manual tasks. Before automation, we spent time and energy on training customer support team with things like how to download orders, how to approve orders, how to find fraud and etc. It was very hard for a support team to follow guidelines and remember long lists of checklists. On top of that, those policies and guidelines kept changing from time to time which caused confusion and mistakes. So, we started automating tasks in 2017. With automation, orders were downloaded and approved automatically, frauds were flagged automatically, critical alerts were sent out automatically, all without human intervention. Thanks to automation, we no longer need to hire as many employees as we should and tasks were done much quicker. Keep building automation until nothing left to automate.
5. Not afraid of failure and be prepared for the setbacks. “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived” or “Failure is part of success” is how the saying goes. Most people are afraid of failure. As an entrepreneur, you should not be afraid, in fact, you must embrace it. Every successful business has failed at some point, but they did not stop which is the main key. We all feel emotionally low after something failed, that is natural and human. But how we respond to our failures is what determines our road to success.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I don’t think I am a great influence. But if I could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, it would try loving others as we love ourselves. We have seen enough violence.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinchenberricle/

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!