Picture 40 to 50 customers inside a single jewelry store at once — not browsing mass-produced inventory, but each one designing a custom piece in real time with guidance from a stylist. That's not a Black Friday anomaly. That's a regular peak hour at HART's Charleston flagship.
Most retailers would see that volume and immediately think: more staff, faster transactions, streamlined product. HART took the opposite approach.
Curry Hagerty, partner and CEO of HART, helped engineer that reality. She joined her sister's custom charm jewelry brand in 2020, bringing operational instincts honed as head of marketing for a luxury hospitality company.
Since then, she's transformed HART from a Shopify store into a multi-location retail operation with major wholesale partnerships, including The Gap, all while preserving the intimate, hospitality-driven experience that defines the brand.
In this episode of Beyond the Register, she reveals how HART operationalized a high-touch retail ritual at scale, built a pop-up for low-risk expansion and created a values-driven hiring framework that protects authenticity as the business grows.
Operationalizing a high-touch retail experience
HART's Charleston flagship regularly handles dozens of customers at one time. Without intentional systems, that volume could easily collapse the intimate, guided experience that defines the brand.
Curry and her team approached the problem like hospitality operators. "We have a hostess at the front who welcomes them and we offer wine or water. And then we walk them through the experience," she explained.
The physical layout evolved through multiple iterations — the flagship is now on version 3.0 or 4.0. One key innovation: moving merchandise from tables (where customers would bend over and sift through) to eye-level wall displays. Hand-painted signage guides customers through the process.
The lesson for growing retailers: identify the friction points in your customer journey, then design physical and operational solutions that maintain experience quality at scale.
Why this jewelry retail brand founder refuses to put her sales team on commission
For many retail operators, commission-based compensation seems like an obvious lever to drive revenue. But for Curry, that approach would fundamentally undermine everything the brand stands for.
"Our retail team is not on commission. We're not about making sales. We truly want to make that connection between our talismans and the customer," she explained.
The takeaway for retailers? Compensation structures aren't just operational decisions, but brand decisions. When your product demands trust, personalization and emotional investment, your team's incentives must reflect those priorities.
Are pop-ups a secret weapon for retail expansion?
Before HART had permanent retail locations, Curry and her sister loaded charms into a suitcase and set up tables at boutiques. That scrappy approach evolved into a sophisticated pop-up play that now drives strategic expansion.
"Pop-ups are an incredible tool for IRL retail," Curry said. "It doesn't need to be a huge investment."
The ladder progresses through clear stages: trunk shows at partner locations (minimal investment), short-term leases through retail incubators like Leap (a low-risk proof of concept), shorter-term seasonal leases (such as their new Nantucket location) and ultimately long-term flagship commitments.
Each stage builds operational knowledge — inventory management, remote hiring, standard operating procedures — while validating market demand. HART maintains a team of three full-time employees dedicated to trunk shows and events, treating pop-ups as a permanent capability rather than a temporary tactic.
For brands evaluating physical retail, this graduated approach reduces risk while generating the data needed for confident long-term decisions.
Measuring store profitability when digital and physical blur
Retail and e-commerce are increasingly symbiotic. A customer might discover HART at a Nashville pop-up, then purchase online from New York months later. How do you attribute that sale?
Curry maintains healthy skepticism about truly knowing where a customer came from. "I am naturally really skeptical of all attributions," she admitted. "The halo effect is a plus up. It's the cherry on top."
Instead of chasing attribution perfection, HART focuses on four-wall profitability. Each store runs its own P&L, separate from e-commerce.
"Retail stores do not equal billboards for us. We're a small business, so ultimately our retail stores have to be profitable," Curry explained.
The team does capture data, such as requiring ZIP codes at checkout helps track customer journeys across channels, but the primary success metric remains straightforward: Does this location generate profit on its own merits?
For small businesses without the luxury of treating retail as a marketing expense, this disciplined approach provides clarity.
How do retailers build the case for quality at higher price points?
The fashion jewelry market is crowded with misleading quality claims. HART differentiates by being unusually transparent about construction — gold-filled chains, brass base layers, gold plating at four times the industry standard.
"There are very few things that keep us up at night. But quality, quality, quality and just making sure that we are delivering the best in class that we can," Curry emphasized.
That commitment extends to durability testing: "I am the ultimate wear tester. When the team wants to see if something's going to last, they're like, ‘Curry, put this on for a week,’" she said.
The brand frames its jewelry as "modern heirlooms" — pieces designed to last and evolve with the wearer. This positioning justifies price points and builds trust, but it requires genuine product investment behind the marketing language.
For retailers in any category, the principle holds: Quality claims must be backed by operational commitment, not just copywriting.
Hiring for emotional intelligence
As HART expands to more locations, maintaining brand authenticity depends on the people behind the counter. How do you screen for the spark that makes the experience special?
"We really value self-expression as a brand, and the candidates who really stand out to us, like, really honor that individuality," Curry explained.
But individuality alone isn't enough. HART screens candidates against five explicit values: respect, integrity, having a can-do attitude, curiosity and being proactive.
"If our candidates and our team members are aligned on those values, they're going to be successful," she said. "You can't scale creativity... but if you're embracing it within that value system, then you have that structure to hire the right people."
The framework came from implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) in 2024, a decision that transformed how the business operates. For growing retailers, the lesson is clear: Codify your values before you scale, then hire against them consistently.
When should a retailer say no to growth opportunities?
HART's customization platform supports dozens of charms, multiple chain lengths and a proprietary drag-and-drop builder. Adding product categories like rings would seem like natural expansion.
But Curry has drawn clear boundaries. "Just because we can doesn't mean we should," she said. Rings would require multiple sizes per design, quintupling SKU counts and potentially requiring different factories and materials.
Instead, HART maximizes its existing sandbox. Chains are cut to order, eliminating excess inventory. The modular system lets customers add, move and reconfigure charms over time. "We want the product to evolve with you," Curry explained.
This discipline reflects a broader operating principle: Complexity debt is real and protecting operational efficiency sometimes means declining revenue opportunities.
For retailers managing multi-channel, high-SKU businesses, the question isn't just "Can we?" but "Should we, given everything else we're managing?"
Ready to hear the full conversation?
Curry's insights on scaling a personalized retail experience offer a practical blueprint for brands navigating growth without sacrificing authenticity. From the pop-up ladder that minimizes expansion risk to the values-based hiring framework that protects culture, this conversation delivered actionable strategies for retailers at every stage.
Listen to the full episode of Beyond the Register to hear Curry discuss partnering with The Gap while protecting brand identity, the EOS implementation that transformed their operations and the best advice she's ever received.