Founder Stories: Brea Fullerton

Who can say that they started their company on their wedding day? Brea Fullerton, founder and CEO of Shinery, is one of the few who’d say “I did!”

If you own fine jewelry, whether it be an engagement ring or precious family heirloom, Shinery creates the perfect product for you — easy on-the-go jewelry cleaning products that don’t involve crazy ingredients or soaking for hours, and simultaneously ensure maximum sparkle.

Saltbox CEO Tyler Scriven sat down with Brea to learn about her entrepreneurial mindset, and what it took to get Shinery off the ground and into the hands of brides everywhere. 

The desire for a jewelry care product began in July 2018, the month of her engagement. Fullerton explained, “So I had this new hardware on my hand that I had to take care of, and I spent all night googling how to take care of my ring, and using the hand soaps of the hotel because we were traveling at the time.” Despite her best efforts, nothing she tried made her ring look the way it did on the day it was purchased.

Brea unknowingly tumbled into a huge problem space. People like her, all around the world, were also looking for cleaning solutions for their rings, and most of the recommended solutions online were at-home concoctions. She saw recipes for vodka, vinegar, bleach, and ketchup cleaning potions. Yes, even ketchup.

Realizing the ketchup-based recipes weren’t for her and her ring, she then bought every pre-manufactured cleaner she could find online. Those solutions required soaking the ring for up to a few hours, which often led to forgetting the ring in a cup somewhere in the house and then panicking about where the ring went.

She needed a cleaning solution that was quick, efficient, and high-quality, and she realized she had to make it herself.

While the problem literally landed in her hands, creating the product wasn’t so easy. Fullerton discovered that “there’s a huge kind of cover over the manufacturing process. People don’t want to tell you who their contract manufacturer is, and it’s a lot of peeling back the curtain…” She searched for many months to find the perfect partner for her business, until she was finally able to create the product of her dreams.

Shinery quickly outgrew Fullerton’s home office space, and she was researching different warehouse options when she came across Saltbox. The other warehouse options seemed too big, and self-storage seemed too small. When she toured Saltbox and found the perfect medium-sized space for her, she was happily surprised, “I [thought] wait a minute… so for an all-inclusive one-payment-a-month plan, I don’t have to worry about a wifi account, a security code, power, water, all of this stuff that you really don’t think about until you’re thinking about it, and I was like done. This is it!” Brea moved into Saltbox before she had a single shipment and she is now shipping nationally and working with brands like Nordstrom and David’s Bridal. Go Brea!

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Finally, if Brea could give one piece of advice to future entrepreneurs, it would be to have tenacity. Finding the right idea, the right recipe for your product and business, and the right place for your business is like finding a needle in a haystack, or like dating. You may meet a lot of frogs, but you’ll know when you meet THE ONE!

Check out the full interview to learn more entrepreneurial tips from Fullerton and how her “let’s make a deal” mentality blossomed from home science projects into a successful startup — one that answers a real problem and fulfills a nationwide need.

We want to share a big thank you to Brea Fullerton and the entire Shinery team. You should definitely check out Shinery if you haven’t yet. They make the perfect gift for all jewelry owners, and especially newlyweds. Explore at shinery.com and on Instagram @shinery.