Behind every booming business, you would expect to find a large team of people, each with an important role that keeps profits rolling in. But some businesses defy expectations and begin with just one person who holds the weight of the business’s success solely on their shoulders. This has been the evolution of the jewelry brand Chvker and its owner and founder, Nazlia Yunus.
Chvker is an online jewelry store that sells delicate feminine pieces that embrace a dreamy aesthetic, with its signature pieces centering on butterflies. The jewelry brand, which is now worn by celebrity A-Listers, like Megan Fox and Bella Thorne, was started by an eighteen-year college student who took their pastime of jewelry making online. The brand has since experienced exponential growth while remaining a one-woman, home-based business. Now 24 years old, Yunus saw her business experience a 760% growth between 2018 to 2019. It’s a feat that has drawn interest in how such scalability was achieved. The answer seems to lie with the woman behind the brand. Yunus started small, selling her handmade chokers on Etsy. As sales of the pieces grew, she launched a shop on Shopify, where her handmade pieces now included necklaces and earrings. The major turning point in bringing her brand to a worldwide audience was when Instagram influencers began to wear her pieces and share pictures of them on the giant social media site. Of her brand’s self-made success, Yunus says, “The brand has always been more than a business for me; it was born from a passion for jewelry and my desire to see the kind of pieces that I would love to wear.”
As a self-made female business owner, who grew her business with no outside investment, Yunus has given the profile of women-led businesses a notable boost. Nazlia Yunus is a first-generation Asian-American and was raised by a single immigrant mother. The company continues to scale upwards. Of her aspirations for the brand, Yunus says, “I hadn’t expected to be running a seven-figure business before I was twenty-five, so I look forward to reaching more incredible milestones with the brand.” Sometimes a business needs a large structured organization to succeed, and sometimes it just needs one dedicated person.
