Celebrity Adds to Jewelry Designer’s Business

my Peters admits that it wasn’t clever marketing efforts that landed one of her signature jewelry pieces on the well-tanned neck of CBS’s “Survivor” contestant, Elisabeth Filarski. But when galleries started calling the California jewelry designer to congratulate her on the coup, she knew she’d stumbled onto something lucrative. “My necklace was on her for the entire season. …. I couldn’t have paid for that kind of advertising,” says Peters. “It boosted my business by almost 15 percent that year.”

Amy Peters’ sterling silver key rings were included in a gift bag given out at an Academy Awards fund-raising party.

In 2003, fame came knocking on Peters’ door not once, but three times. In March, her work was accepted for a gift bag presented to attendees at the 9th Annual Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards. Peters says she approached the company hired to create the gift bags, Backstage Creations, and submitted her lariat necklace to be juried. “[The gift bag] was given out to some of the top celebrities in the industry,” says Peters, “including Uma Thurman, Debra Messing and Renee Zellweger.”

Following on the heels of her SAG success, Peters was offered an opportunity to donate her sterling silver key rings for a gift bag given out at an Academy Awards fund-raising party benefiting several charitable organizations. Femail Creations, one of Peters’ catalog clients, was selected by the Academy to create the bag, which included items totaling over $80,000. Celebrities attending the benefit and members of the Academy received the gift bag.

Peters tried to get her work into the Oscars gift bag given exclusively to award presenters, but she says there is a fee to be included in that bag or your work must exceed a certain value. “It many cases, [the value] has to be at least $100 per item,” says Peters, “which is a lot considering that you donate about 100 to 400 items without any compensation.”

In June, Peters’ work was included in a gift bag created for a fund-raising event hosted by the HollyRod Foundation, which was founded by NFL quarterback Rodney Peete and actress Holly Robinson Peete to provide financial, physical and emotional support for patients living with Parkinson’s disease. “My mother has Parkinson’s disease and I had been looking for an organization that I could support by donations of my jewelry,” says Peters. “I designed a custom key ring for the [HollyRod Foundation] to be given out at the event and sold for future fund-raising efforts.”

Peters was invited to the Foundation’s fund-raising party at Sugar Ray Leonard’s house. The event included a concert by Stevie Wonder and a guest list that included celebrities such as Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson and John Ritter. “When I was leaving after the event, I … gave out lots of business cards,” says Peters.

While all of this may seem like an outstanding streak of luck, Peters says that she actively seeks opportunities such as these in which she can get her work in the hands of influential people. “I searched the Internet looking for companies that create the gift bags,” she says. “And the opportunity through the HollyRod Foundation happened because I wanted to give back in a meaningful way.”

In addition to searching the Internet, Peters also targets her marketing to celebrities who frequent high-profile events. As a result, actress Ashley Scott wore one of Peters’ bracelets to the premier of the movie “2 Fast 2 Furious.”

With all of this added exposure, Peters says that she had great success at George Little Management’s California Gift Show in Los Angeles in July. And while she thought the Buyers Market of American Craft in Philadelphia this summer was “quite slow,” she did get one sale there because of her celebrity ties. “If people are just looking for fast sales, [a celebrity-related] event is not the way to do it,” says Peters. “It’s more about creating a brand and getting the name of your company in front of influential people over and over again. It does end up in increased sales, but not as quickly as an ad in a trade magazine would. I’ve been in the business long enough that I now really focus on increased awareness for my company, which is what these events can do for me.”