Making Her Business Sparkle

This Babson MBA is using her entrepreneurial training to help develop her jewelry company

by Alexandra Van Dell

Alexandra Van Dell
Founder & President
Alexandra Van Dell Fine Jewelry Designs
MBA Class of 2003
Babson College

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I am the Founder and President of Alexandra Van Dell Fine Jewelry Designs, located in Westport, Conn. My company is fairly small, made up of four independent contractors.

After receiving my MBA from (Babson College) in 2003, I moved to New York City to design fine jewelry for the on-the-go city woman. I'm actually a third-generation jewelry designer, from the legendary Van Dell Jewelers.

Two years before starting the Babson MBA program, I started a wholesale antique jewelry business. This gave me a strong appreciation for the rich jewelry heritage, in terms of both design and craftsmanship. At Babson, I realized that expanding the antique business was not very practical, because each piece of jewelry is a one-of-a-kind. It is very hard to scale up that type of business model.

I started researching what today's designers were doing, and learned that much of the creativity of our jewelry history has fallen by the wayside. So I decided to design the Alexandra Van Dell fine jewelry line to incorporate the craftsmanship of yesterday with our modern lifestyles, and really push the envelope of design into the future.

As an entrepreneur and designer, there really is no "typical" day for me. My time is filled with major strategic decision making, menial labor, and bursts of creativity that strike me at random times (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/30/06, "B-School Pieced It All Together"). Still, here's how the day went.

9 a.m. Woke up way too late, as I stayed up until the wee hours sketching. Make a beeline for the coffee machine and kiss my dog, Penny, who has become my Vice-President of Marketing. She and I volunteer to visit patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital. This golden lab opens doors and builds trust the way no human can.

9:15 a.m. Scramble to the computer to return e-mails. My Western regional sales representative needs a price quote for my line using black Tahitian pearls.

9:30 a.m. Place a phone call to my pearl distributor, attain prices and make the needed quote through my massive Excel sheet...

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Van Dell is founder and president of Alexandra Van Dell Fine Jewelry Designs and a graduate of Babson College's MBA Class of 2003 .