Haverhill Leach works with her husband in her second self-made business from a waterfront maker space in Warren, creating goods for an appreciative, growing client base.
Leach’s eponymous-named business,
Haverhill Leach Inc., creates jewelry, products she calls “a delight to the senses.”
Leach’s product line and promotional theme have hit on an inspired sweet spot. Haverhill Leach’s jewelry line is mostly composed of delicate, yellow-gold or white-gold chains that bear gemstones corresponding to birth months. She estimates gross annual sales at $10 million.
Working through Haverhill’s website, customers create bespoke rings, bracelets and necklaces bearing the birthstones of family members. It is a gift idea for mothers or any women who want to remember and honor family members via their jewelry.
“It is the one piece of jewelry that many of our customers claim they never take off,” Leach said. “The pieces are understated and timeless; they go with anything in the wardrobe.”
Because customers design the jewelry using family birthstones, the rings and necklaces bear extra emotional significance.
“We have heard many beautiful stories” from customers, Leach said.
The business, founded in 2013, employs about 30 to 50 people, depending on the season. They design, cast, clean, set and polish chains and stones from a big waterfront space in Warren with giant windows looking out onto the Warren River, a finger of Narragansett Bay. When they first rented the space, Leach and her husband and co-owner, Andrej Strojin, broke through a solid wall to create the waterfront window, welcoming light and beauty into the workspace. The couple lives right across the water from the shop, in Barrington, with their 12- and 13-year-old children.
Leach’s genetic connection to jewelry goes back to 1899, when her great-grandfather founded the jewelry company Leach and Garner in Attleboro, later renamed
LeachGarner Inc. The business made gold beads, posts, wires and even the tubing for Providence-based
A.T. Cross Co. LLC pens. Her grandfather and father both worked in the business, which her father later sold.
In fact, Leach said when she was in her teens, her father starred in a popular jewelry-selling segment on QVC called “Eterna Gold.” She remembers watching her dad’s compelling sales performances on TV, as well as the jewelry samples that her father would bring home for reactions and evaluation from his wife and daughter.
“He was cute and very charis-matic,” Leach said.
Leach grew up in Attleboro but attended school at Wheeler School in Providence. After she graduated from Syracuse University, she worked for a while in Manhattan, N.Y., and then moved to California, where she founded and worked at a swimsuit design and manufacturing business, selling swimsuits to major retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Anthropologie.
A decade or so into the 2000s, Leach decided to return to Rhode Island. She and her husband, who had skills in business management, cooked up and executed the idea that led to the Haverhill Leach Inc. company.
At first, Leach said she was designing bolder and chunkier “statement” jewelry pieces made from silver. She sold her work at trunk shows across the country, and gradually came to see and understand what styles appealed to people. Herself a busy working mother with young kids, she modified her designs toward jewelry that was lighter, more comfortable and easier to wear at all times. She moved into gold because she didn’t like to see her pieces get tarnished.
In addition to the company’s two-level space in Warren, where workers design and construct the jewelry, as well as do inspection, shipping, customer service and product development, the company has offices in Slovenia, the native home of Leach’s husband. The European office conducts digital marketing and created and continually refines the company’s website.
In Warren, Leach and her managers also have created an in-house school, of sorts, to help workers enhance their skills and move up the line of skill and sophistication in creating the jewelry. Leach said the idea for accelerated training began in the busy Christmas season, when front-line workers who cut the raw chain learned to work so fast that they ended up with time on their hands.
They were open to learning and growing in the craft, so classes were developed to teach people more-advanced skills, such as cleaning, setting stones and polishing.
Leach invested in new microscopes, jeweler benches and a TV with a live feed to do the training.
A master jeweler on the staff said he wanted to export his knowledge to a new generation of jewelry-makers.
“Let me teach these people,” he told Leach.
“We have a lovely team of people; very positive, very good vibe,” Leach said. “We want to keep people motivated and to keep jewelry-making in Rhode Island.”
Great story!