Founder, President, and Chief Design Officer, Jibbitz

For former stay-at-home mom Sheri Schmelzer, an innocent craft day with the kids resulted in a product that wound up in thousands of stores and sold over 8 million pieces worldwide. And that was just in its first year.

Schmelzer is living proof that stepping back and letting your creativity run wild can lead to the life of your dreams. It all started when Sheri and her kids decided to decorate their many pairs of Crocs by making little charms out of clay and rhinestones that fit into the holes of the shoes. Her husband, Rich, came home and immediately saw the potential in their idea, and together they created what is now known as Jibbitz, a collection of colorful snap-on accessories specifically designed to fit Crocs shoes.

A year and a half later, Jibbitz became a worldwide sensation—and Crocs bought the company for $10 million.

What we learned from Sheri: Keep it simple and believe in what you’re doing, even on the bad days. You have to believe in your product or it’s not going to succeed.

Take Your Creativity Seriously

“When we came up with the idea, the kids and I couldn’t wait for my husband to get home so we could show him what we’d been playing around with all day. My husband is a serial entrepreneur, and the second he saw our stuff he immediately swore us to secrecy. He forbade us from wearing them out of the house until we got the patent.”

How Every Day Became Craft Day

“We sat down and asked ourselves if we wanted to take a chance on making this a real business. We were playing with a home equity line that was untapped at that point and we took a leap of faith—do we believe in the product? Yes. Do we want to do this? Yes. If it didn’t work, at least we could say we believed in it and gave it our best shot.”

Having Fun Is the Best Strategy

“We didn’t write a business plan. I think it can sometimes squash an idea completely. It gets too technical and takes all the fun out of it.”

The Personal Touch

“If you have good customer service then your customers are going to talk about you. We didn’t do any marketing or advertising at all; it was all organic growth. I was taking products out to stores and showing them myself. I was reaching out to everyone on the phone. It was so fun, but it grew at such a fast pace that eventually it became impossible to talk to everyone myself. I actually miss that part.”

Even Supermom Needs Help

“In the beginning I was juggling being a mother of three with working 24 hours a day. I was in the basement making these things by hand and since I didn’t have a cutoff point, it would be like one or two in the morning when my husband would drag me out of there. I had trouble remembering that I’m a mom first, so within the first month we decided to hire someone to get me back to reality.”

Perfection Takes Time

“I went full force into it and wanted it to be a well-oiled machine right away. We started with one design, sold a bunch, and all of a sudden we started getting complaints. They kept breaking and people started sending them back. It was awful. I had to step back and realize that everything is a progression—it’s a really important thing to remember. Crying really helps too! It wasn’t until our ninth revision that we got the design right.”

The Power of Niche

“I think that our growth happened so quickly because we hit an untapped market. Nobody had seen anything like it before, so as soon as one or two stores started carrying it, it was like BAM—it took off.”

Take a Chill Pill

“It’s important to try not to get too overwhelmed. I would recommend doing yoga and relaxing into the fact that you’re starting a business. It’s a very emotional process, especially for women. It’s your baby. I had never been in business before, I was a housewife, and then all of a sudden here was this thing that I was as passionate about as I was about raising my three children to adulthood. It completely sucked me in.”

Hitting the Crocpot

“When Crocs offered to buy us it was a little bittersweet. We were having so much fun and we were scared they were going to try and change everything. Luckily for us, they had the attitude that it’s stupid to fix something that isn’t broken, so they pretty much let us run our company the way we wanted to. Obviously we now have guidelines that we didn’t have when we weren’t part of a public company, but really nothing much has changed. We still hire and fire our own people. So I guess I’d have to say the bitter part has gone away. It’s just like it was before.”

Passion = Perfect Job

“Even though we’ve sold the business, I’m still there every day designing products and I still absolutely love it. I even have a special place in the office that has a computer where my kids can come up with design ideas—I let them draw them out and then give them to my illustrators.”

The Next Step

“We’re coming out with some new products, like messenger bags and small purses. We’ll also be debuting some new products at the World Shoe Association in Vegas, which I can’t wait for because I love looking at all those shoes!”

This Featured Lady was profiled by Jen Sincero, an author, columnist, and Ladies Who Launch Incubator leader based in Venice, California.