How the ordeal of getting an ear piercing pushed a 34-year-old mom to ditch her law career to launch the adult version of Claire's

The 39-year-old mother of two and Ivy League grad is the co-founder and CEO of Studs, an ear piercing boutique headquartered in New York with nearly two dozen locations throughout the U.S. Harman developed the idea after an isolating experience getting a second piercing at a tattoo shop—after refusing to pay several hundred dollars for the stud at a high-end jewelry store. Studs, with bright buoyant yellow branding and a chic, polished look, serves as a halfway point. It fits the mold for the successful thirty-something entrepreneur looking for new bling, the edgy college student gunning for a tenth cartilage ring, or a 14-year-old getting her first set of hoops. 

Harman, a former lawyer and Bridgewater asset manager, has remained at the helm of the company since she founded it in 2019, and she sees its store count exceeding 30 this year—and perhaps an expanded suite of offerings as it gains greater funding. All she really needs to keep growing, she told Fortune, is her secret to success: a really good night’s sleep.

The following transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Where did you grow up, and what did your parents do?

I grew up in Westchester, right outside of New York City. My father was an architect and my mom was an executive and a big role model for me. I went to the same school for my entire time from kindergarten to 12th grade—Horace Mann—and then I went to Princeton University.

What was your very first job?

I tutored a lot in high school and in college, some not for money, and some for money. I studied English at Princeton. After I graduated from college, I went to Boston University for law school. I had always known that I wanted to go to law school and potentially be a lawyer. So it was really exciting to be able to do that. I practiced as a lawyer for about two years. I was a mutual fund formation lawyer, which is about as boring as it sounds, and part of the reason I stopped practicing law.

What were some of your early ideas? 

Well, none of them are very good, and so I’m happy we landed on Studs. I played around a lot in the space, thinking about [consumer packaged goods]. I thought a lot about products for the 60-plus demographic, but Studs was the one that really stuck. 

I practiced law in an area called 40 Act, which is mutual fund formation or public fund work. 

I love the people I worked with, but I didn’t love the subject matter. But it was important to me at the time to be busy, because I graduated from law school in the midst of the 2009 recession. 

I knew I never wanted to be a partner at a law firm—that was never my goal. When I left law, I went on to work as an asset manager at Bridgewater. I was very excited about that transition.

I spent a little under five years at Bridgewater on the managerial side. I then went to a startup that was funded and founded by a former very senior Bridgewater person. That was, for lack of a better way to put it, trying to create the coolest closet. It had a services arm and a computer vision AI arm. I spent more time on the services arm. We actually sold that business after about two years, and I went to work at Walmart’s incubator and spent another about two years there, primarily working on a text-to-shopping business called Jetblack, a Walmart subsidiary. Studs was after that. 

I started thinking about Studs because I had a strange piercing experience while working at Jetblack. I really was incubating, in my own mind, what the strange experience was. I hadn’t had another piercing since I was 17 or 18, and I went to a very fancy place downtown in New York City. They told me I would probably have to wait two hours, because they didn’t take appointments, and that I probably would have spent probably somewhere between $500 and $700 just for one piercing. I thought, this is way too expensive. And I don’t want to wait two hours. 

So I went to a tattoo parlor around the corner in Soho, and the piercing experience was great. I really loved my piercer. It was done with a needle. I felt like it was a very sterile environment. However, I didn’t love the jewelry, and I was very, personally, out of place at the tattoo parlor. So it made me wonder, well, if you’re me, where do you go when you’ve graduated from some of the mall brands that we all spent time at when we were younger? I left Jetblack about a month before we started fundraising for Studs. 

When you were growing up, were you always interested in piercings and jewelry?

It’s funny, I actually was not a big piercing or jewelry enthusiast. I’ve become more of that, obviously, since starting the business. At the time I started Studs, I only had my lobes pierced, and I had a cartilage piercing that I had let close up, but I only had two holes. 

Have you done more since you’ve started? 

Oh, yes, I have nine now. And I have room for more, and I’m excited to have more.

Do you remember your first piercing experience?

I got my lobes pierced at a jewelry shop in Westchester, where I lived. My mom took me; I was probably about eight. And then I actually had a cartilage piercing, like I was saying, that I got on Saint Mark’s Place when I was about 16 or 17, which I successfully hid for my parents for like eight months, which is both a testament to my determination, I think to hide it from them—and also maybe they weren’t paying enough attention.

Do you think of Studs as a mall brand?

To me, Studs is filling a hole in the market. It’s a place to go get needle piercings, and nobody pierces with needles at scale on your ears. And so we really felt like that’s the healthy and safe way to do it. The piercing with needles allows you to have much more intricate piercings on your ear. We were really focused on bringing this experience to life, be it in malls, be it on high streets, be it in small towns.

How do you differentiate Studs from a place like Claire’s—a mall brand targeted towards younger kids?

Claire’s is for younger customers—it describes itself as being targeted at tweens. The Studs core demographic is 18 to 35, and our median age is actually 27. Everything we think about in terms of the store experience, the store design, and how we actually want people to interact with the brand is with an older customer in mind. Someone who Claire’s was really never designed for. 

Separately, the way we design the studios—legally, we’re very focused on complying with all the regulations around needle piercing—but when you get pierced in the front of the store at Claire’s, the reason that’s possible is because they’re piercing you with a piercing gun. Because Studs only pierces with needles, we’re legally required to have private piercing rooms.

What kind of vibe is Studs aiming to create?

My cofounder Lisa [Bubbers] and I joke when we built the first studio that we were very interested in it being like a “chic medi spa.” It’s very minimalist, very focused on the ability for somebody to not only have a great experience with their piercers, but also with the piercing. We really wanted to pare the experience down a bit to make it feel more minimalist and not as maximalist as some of the other mall brands. 

How are you differentiating Studs from tattoo parlors?

In two ways. The first way is: we only pierce ears, we don’t pierce anything else. Secondly, we’re really focused on creating an environment that feels inclusive for everyone. And tattoo parlors, by their name, are focused on tattoos. Piercing is not their primary business. I think they are a certain kind of countercultural environment. And I think not everybody wants that out of an ear piercing, especially because with an ear piercing, you are saying something to the world about yourself. 

It’s also not the deepest experience that you’ve ever had. It’s not like getting a tattoo, necessarily. We wanted it to feel light and friendly and open to everyone.

Why are needle piercings are better than piercing guns? 

Because piercing with a piercing gun is like putting a three-hole punch through your ear. It basically forces the tissue back, and a needle creates a clean cut. Needles can also be sterilized in a way that piercing guns cannot. We only use single-use needles. 

How did you and your cofounder [Lisa Bubbers] meet?

We’ve been friends for a really long time. My husband’s best childhood friend is Lisa’s best friend from college. We were able to work on multiple different ideas together. Before we thought about Studs, we were thinking about other companies we could start together. 

Lisa came with me to the tattoo parlor when I got my piercing. I had originally said to her, ‘Hey, I had this weird piercing experience at the fancy place and I think I’m gonna go to a tattoo parlor.’ She came with me to the tattoo parlor and she was like, ‘Yeah, this is really weird. Why does it work like this?’ Her interests were piqued, too.

What was it like to start a company with your friend?

We’ve always had a really great, unbelievable relationship. I think in some ways, starting a company with a friend you share values with was easier than starting with a relative or a stranger. We’ve been lucky, I think, because we were friends beforehand, and we were able to build the company more productively because we knew a lot about each other.

How did you guys fund stuff when you first started?

We first started in a coworking space, and we funded it ourselves. We obviously weren’t spending much money, but we spent probably four to six months pre-fundraise investing in the business by ourselves. Then we went out and fundraised for our seed round in around February of 2019. We raised a little north of $3 million.

Why do you think investors were so willing to put money into your company?

One thing investors really liked about Studs was that it was such an obvious idea. I told people what it was, and they were sort of like, ‘it’s the grownup version of Claire’s.’ People really responded quickly and said, ‘Of course that should exist,’ and they were, I think, really enthusiastic about the idea. I think they were really excited about Lisa and I as a cofounding pair, because we both had spent a lot of time working in startups. Lisa is all things brand and marketing, and she’s the reason Studs is cool. I am the reason Studs is functional. 

You said you don’t have a giant marketing budget. Why not?

The biggest area of our marketing budget is rent. It’s about choosing the right locations for all of the studios. I think the second thing is, we really wanted the brand to speak for itself, and to not have to spend tons and tons of money on digital marketing in order to convince people to come into the studios. 

Referral is actually our largest source of acquisition. And one thing that I really attribute that to is that the studio teams are just unbelievable. I think they create the most wonderful, hospitable customer experience. That means if somebody comes into Studs, and has a great time getting a piercing, they’ll tell their friends.

When you were pitching the idea to investors, did you come across anyone who didn’t see a vision?

Of course. When you’re pitching, people are sort of like, ‘I don’t understand. Why does this need to exist?’ The main point of friction that we came across at that time was ‘how big of a market is this really?’  Nobody studies this concept called TAM, which is ‘target addressable market’ of piercing. They study it in other sectors. We constantly had to explain to people: Look around, look at the ears you see on the street every single day and look how many piercings those people have. When you start to do that, it’s easier to convince an investor that it’s a big market. 

You opened your first studio in Nolita in November 2019, and your second in Hudson Yards February 2020, right before Covid. What was the pandemic like?

We were super lucky to have raised another round of financing right before Covid happened—about two weeks before the world shut down. We were well-positioned financially, but obviously, the business had to close for about six months. And at the time, I was eight months pregnant. I remember being really concerned about what would happen to me, to my child, to everyone in my family, because of this. But also: What would happen to our business? 

Post-Covid, we were so lucky to see people come back and want to get piercings again. But we were questioning, at the beginning of Covid, whether that would be true. Obviously getting an ear piercing is a deeply optional thing to do. It’s not like going to the dentist. It’s not like going to the doctor. It’s not like getting your hair cut. I wondered whether or not people would, that quickly, want to return to getting things like ear piercings. 

But I think people felt so cooped up during Covid that they were so excited to get out of the house. In September of 2021, we reopened and people flocked back to Studs, which was amazing. We were really lucky for that.

Do you think that Zoom helped during that time period? 

We thought at the time, in March of 2020, that no one would want to buy earrings, because everyone was buying sweatpants. But Zoom actually helped us, because the only thing you can see when you’re on Zoom with people, typically, is their ears. So people really wanted to buy. 

Do you think the pandemic almost helped your business a little bit, once you were able to reopen? 

I think the biggest thing that helped was for us to be able to slow down and reflect on what had happened from November 2019, when we opened the first studio, through March 2020. When you’re building a business, especially a consumer business, it’s almost like a runaway train, especially if it’s working. 

I think the nice thing—if there was any silver lining of Covid at all, which was obviously very challenging for many people—is that we had about six months to really step back, think about the business, and focus on ecommerce. That was a lucky moment for us because you don’t get that. Typically, the business is moving independently of you in most cases. And for a moment the world stopped.

Which is a bigger source of revenue for the company, ecommerce or brick-and-mortar stores?

Definitely our retail stores. We currently have 22 stores in 12 states, and we plan to open a bunch more this year. We’ll get to over 30 this year. We have six stores in New York, two in LA, a bunch in Texas, one in Madison, Wisconsin, one in New Orleans, one in Miami, and so on. We were really focused on this idea when we were building the real estate footprint for Studs: How can Studs be everywhere? How can we prove to ourselves that this isn’t just an urban coastal phenomenon? 

Do locations in different cities have different vibes and popular styles?

We’ve experimented at Studs with some local vibes in certain studios. For example, Miami has this incredible palm tree installation that Lisa envisioned. We also have local jewelry collections in certain studios. For example, in Chicago, we have Michael Jordan derivative earrings and in New York we have MetroCard earrings. We have done some things like that to make each Studs feel like it has a little bit of a unique twist. We make all the jewelry ourselves. We design in-house and we produce overseas. 

Who is your biggest competitor?

Honestly, it’s the tattoo parlor. When we do customer research, that’s what customers tell us. They feel they’ve graduated from the mall brands and that they would otherwise go to a tattoo parlor. 

Needle piercing is regulated differently than guns. So the environments of the tattoo rooms and Studs rooms are actually quite similar. Obviously, we try to make it fun, and we have lollipops and fun stress balls and candy. But in terms of how they’re actually constructed and laid out, and what equipment we have, they’re very similar.

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

People really don’t talk enough, when they start a business, about how hard it is day-to-day, and how, at the end of the day, the buck really does stop with you. For us at Studs, when Covid happened, we had to do furloughs, like many businesses. I became the customer-service agent. I was the one running payroll. And that’s totally fine with me. I, of course, don’t mind doing those things. But I think you can end up in a scenario frequently where you don’t realize that you do everything if things aren’t going well.

I think for many people, that’s not how they view starting a business. They think it’s glamorous, and sexy, and you get to do cool interviews like this. You don’t get to do cool interviews like this until year five, after you were the customer-service agent.