Before Marie Gems was Marie Gems, I was selling Paparazzi jewelry. That was the business. Then I got removed from it, and that one moment ended up being the reason Marie Gems exists at all.
I didn't have some grand plan sitting in a drawer waiting for the right moment. Getting let go wasn't part of a strategy — it was just what happened. But instead of going and finding another company to sell for, I decided to build something that was actually mine. No one else's name on it, no one else's rules about what I could sell or how.
That's where "Marie Gems" comes from. The name started in the Paparazzi days, and when everything about the business changed underneath it — the products, the platforms, the entire model — the name stayed. It didn't need to change just because I did. If anything, keeping it felt like proof that this whole thing started with me, not with whatever I happened to be selling that year.
What actually changed after that
Once I wasn't tied to someone else's product line, everything opened up. Marie Gems started small — stickers, journals — made and sold out of a two-bedroom apartment with my family around me the whole time. There was no warehouse, no team, no outside investment. Just me, figuring it out one product at a time.
It would've been easier, honestly, to just go find another direct-sales company and plug back in. That path already existed. Building your own means there's no script — you're deciding everything, from what you make to how you price it to whether it even works. But that's also the part that made it mine.
Why this story matters more than it might seem
I call myself a Dual-Threat Business Owner, and this is part of where that identity actually started, not just where I decided to claim the label. Getting removed from Paparazzi could have been the end of "selling things" for me. Instead it became the start of running something. That's the difference between working for a business and building one — and it's a difference I didn't understand until I didn't have a choice but to figure it out.
Three years later, Marie Gems looks nothing like those early sticker and journal days. But the reason it exists at all traces straight back to that one moment of getting let go — and deciding not to go looking for another company to hand my time to.
If you're in a spot right now where something got taken away and you're not sure what comes next, I get it. Sometimes the thing that feels like it ended your plan is actually the start of a different one.