Notes from Sara, Co-Founder & Design Director

Reflecting on 10 years is a really lovely thing to do—and it also highlights how much things have changed in quite a short amount of time.
From holding appointments in my living room, to a relatively small space in Islington—which felt like a big commitment at the time—to a beautiful, sunlit space in Honeysuckle. And you take that and multiply it by every little working facet of the business, and it’s a really hard thing to comprehend.
Each month, you’re dealing with a different challenge. Each month, you’re coming up with a different solution, a new system, a new process, a way to handle the next exciting thing that’s coming at you and coming into your business. And I think to look back and be really proud—and be really excited about the next 10 years—is a really nice moment to have.

Being in the jewellery space is a really lovely place to play.
It has the scale of a design house—we still have challenges like storage and materials and transport—but with jewellery, it’s so beautiful and small. We don’t have the pressure like fashion houses do, where they have to release new collections so often and be so far ahead of the curve.
Jewellery is really lovely that it sits to the side slightly, and we don’t take that for granted. It’s definitely allowed us to take our time and build the business at a pace that’s suited us—and I think that’s a really gentle way of doing business.

The beautiful thing about the balance between Maddy and I is that if we both get excited about something, we know it’s worth chasing.

Big Dreams, Shared Instincts

We are really ambitious. We really do see big things for the company. Sometimes we’re a little bit different with our alignment on things—and usually, that turns out to have not been the right path. So again, having that person that you trust wholeheartedly and look to for guidance and ideas—it’s such a nice thing to be able to have that kind of radar for what the next right move is.
Being in Newcastle makes it such a kind place to do business. We’re very lucky with the amount of space that we have to operate in. I think our next venture, when we look to the future, is this beautiful purpose-built working studio where we can hold appointments, make jewellery, operate all of our logistics from, and keep our team together—because that’s something we’ve always really valued.

Kate & Kole wouldn’t be what it is today without it being the most amazing partnership between Maddy and I.
The respect that we have for each other is the foundation that’s really allowed us to build a business in the way that we have. It’s mostly been exciting, and more often than not a whirlwind—having to make decisions that, over time, we’ve become more comfortable making. But it took us a while to get to that level of comfort. And now those decisions are so intuitive and instinctive, and that makes us know we’re on the right path.

Our Team is Our Compass

Our team has become an absolute guiding light in terms of business and how we operate. Having a group of 40+ people who surround us now makes it impossible not to hear the commentary and the reflections that they give us, and how they tell us about the health of our business. They really tell us when we’re doing the right thing, and we’re so grateful to have their voices there as a contributing part of business decisions and what we put importance on.
I think that, you know, when we talk about what it means to work with us and work at Kate & Kole, people are often blown away by what we do—but it’s because we value our team, and we don’t want to be a regular workplace. We want to be a place where, when someone looks back on their career, they remember being part of this journey really fondly.

Sustainability from the Start

Lab-grown diamonds weren’t a choice that we made on a whim.

Sustainability has also been a real grounding principle since the day we started the business. Making sure that our packaging and the suppliers we worked with were thoughtful and environmentally conscious was not an accident—it was all things that we did from the beginning.
This came from a place of knowing that while what we’re making isn’t a necessity, the amazing moments that jewellery can bring—from life’s most important moments, representing a loved one or remembering someone—is important. And making sure that how we operated and how we presented those pieces had the same level of care and thoughtfulness is really important to us.

Our business and our families have both felt the pressure of the other over the last five years.
Since Harry was first born in 2019, since welcoming Zoe into my family, and Maddy having Camille. At times, we’re not great business leaders and we’re not great family members. That means that other people in our lives have to fill those spaces for us. And that’s something that we battle with.
It’s something that we don’t take for granted. We look to others with admiration when we know they’re going through similar things. And we also hope to support our team—a lot of our team are working mums—so it’s something that we’re very acutely tuned into, because it is a juggle having both of these wonderful things in our lives.

Our Customers, Always

Our customers are at the heart of everything that we do. And I know that sometimes that can sound like a marketing line or something people say but don’t really follow through on—but I know, from day one, we’ve put our customers first.
We’ve made the connection between their experience and what it means to come and visit or work with us at Kate & Kole such a priority. And I really do believe that’s why we’ve attracted such amazing customers. That relationship and dynamic that we now have allows us to be really thoughtful and calculated with what we do, because we understand our customer so well and we know what they want and need.