Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kelly Fox. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kelly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. undefined

In the Spring of 2024, I was set to go on tour with a band as their photographer. By what felt like an act of God at the time, the tour was cancelled and I found myself with a month of free time and no idea where my next check was coming from. Fortunately, my parents needed some manual labor done at the time and had a small budget, so I went home to work. Around the same time, I had interest from a merchandise company that liked our product, but needed it to be more polished. As I painted and sanded and weeded and mulched, I redesigned the product in my head and sketched it out on breaks. At night, I chatted with suppliers and eventually brought my design to manufacturing. To this day, I credit that tour cancellation for the real start of my company!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Plug & Play Jewelry is a custom jewelry brand specializing in ear plug earrings. Our goal is to create hearing protection that’s easier to use, harder to lose, and so cute you’ll actually wear it.

I’ve worked in various roles in live music my entire career— photographer, tour manager, ticket scanner, merchandise seller, you name it. I’ve worn a lot of hats, and a lot of ear plugs. I was diligent about hearing protection after talking to so many industry veterans with hearing loss, but it was still annoying to use. Frustrated, I made a pair of ear plug earrings for myself, and before I knew it, my coworkers wanted pairs for themselves and Plug & Play Jewelry was born.

For awhile, I made them out of my bedroom and sold them to friends. When I went on tour, some artists would let me sell them at their merch table for extra cash. They took off, I opened an e-commerce store, and I continued to tweak the product. Eventually, I created a more polished design that could be partially manufactured, and the rest is history.

Plug & Play Jewelry now offers both premade and custom designs on our website, custom designs via our design-your-own-earring bar at events, and branded wholesaling. I’m by no means the first person to make ear plug earrings, but to my knowledge we’re the only ones creating custom work to this scale. The product can truly look however you want, and I feel that’s crucial to our mission of getting people excited about hearing protection.

Finally, I’m obsessed with quality, both from a design and control standpoint. I simply refuse to sell a product that doesn’t fit the customer’s needs or doesn’t hold up to typical wear and tear. Most people who know me would call me fanatical, but I have yet to have a product return in 2 years of business.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Our most successful project is also my favorite, we’ve been partnering with guest designers to bring their vision to life. Our collaborators design their own custom pair, then we sell it on our website for a limited time. This creates a great opportunity for us to not only gain exposure from new audiences, but explore new avenues as well. We’ve done really well with a rock-forward crowd, but I want to branch out more into EDM, sports, and more, so these partnerships give us a great opportunity to showcase our versatility.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

I had literally no idea what I was doing when I got into manufacturing and truthfully wasn’t trying to do so. I was actually looking for a part that would help me automate production back home, but I planned to keep it in-house.

I found a supplier with a similar part, but he explained that my design wouldn’t work. I was flabbergasted, but he was right, he sent me videos of prototypes failing. He helped me re-design the product, and his area of expertise gave me confidence. Eventually, I realized it was silly to assemble the product here when his company had a better understanding how to put it together.

He created some samples, I loved them, and we started with a pretty massive first order. Custom products have a high MOQ and some hard lessons were learned. Luckily all were fixable with blood, sweat, and tears. However, I would highly recommend sitting with your samples for a good month to mull over your design choices before you order… say, 1,000 pairs?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://plugandplayjewelry.com
• Instagram: @plugandplayjewelry
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-fox-2a9b57160?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

Image Credits

Nick Karp