/ 202 COVER STORY / isabella weems By Marlene Montanez
LOCKETS OF
Y
oung, bubbly and full of life. Seventeen-year-old Isabella Weems (Bella) is just like many girls her age; she’s making plans for college, spending time with friends and enjoying her brand new jeep (a gift she bought herself for her 16th birthday). Of course, unlike other girls her age, she’s balancing all this while working at Origami Owl, the Chandler-based custom jewelry company she founded at just 14-years-old.
Love
Chandler teen and Origami Owl founder, Isabella Weems, turns a young dream into a national business.
“When I was 14-years-old, my dream was to buy a car when I turned 16. I went to my parents and they asked me what I was going to do to make this dream come true. I always believed you can do anything you set your mind to, so I decided to sell beautiful custom lockets. Instead of hanging out with my friends, I spent many hours on the weekends hosting jewelry parties,” Bella said in an email interview. Her hard work paid off. What started as a hobby doing home parties selling lockets at local vendors and fairs quickly flourished. On Black Friday in 2010, everything changed. Weems had rented a kiosk at Chandler Fashion Center and the response was overwhelming. The kiosk ended up staying for a year. Eventually Bella’s mom, Chrissy, phoned the family for help. “I got a phone call from my sister, she said: ‘Bella’s a mess! Origami Owl is doing really well; her business is growing. This is like a bowling ball rolling down a hill and either we’re going with it or we’re not,” recounts Jessica Reinhart, chief marketing officer at Origami Owl and Bella’s aunt. Chrissy asked both Reinhart and her husband to uproot their lives in Connecticut to move to Arizona and join the company. Jessica Reinhart would be handling sales and her husband, Jeff, would be overseeing operations. “I will never forget it,” Reinhart says. “I had both my kids in the backseat and had pulled over to take this call. I was thinking ‘this sounds crazy, we have our whole life here!’ I went home that night and talked to my husband, Jeff, and
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202 MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2013 / 202magazine.com