JEWELRY DESIGNER KARINA Brez spent a couple of months walking through a blue-masking-tape model floor plan in her living room while plotting out what her tiny-house jewelry store on wheels would look like.
She knew what she wanted, but she was on a tight deadline to have her equestrian-themed Jeweled Barn ready for the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, FL, in January 2023. She had sold her jewelry at the show for years, and it was time she moved out of the VIP tent and into the portable pop-up she’d long envisioned.
“I was so nervous,” Brez says. “I wondered, ‘Are people going to shop for jewelry in a trailer?’ I decided that if I’m going to do this, it’s going to be the best-looking trailer there is. Beautiful and high-end in every square inch. It blossomed into the best thing that ever happened to my business.”
Brez specializes in designing equestrian jewelry with collections called Huggable Hooves, Lucky Horsehoes, and Bit of Love. Ninety percent of her customers at horse shows are repeat customers. “I also have one-of-a-kindcouture pieces with diamonds or colored stones. Everything sells.”
The Jeweled Barn, built by Movable Roots Tiny Home Builders of Melbourne, FL, is a solar-powered, eco-friendly tiny-house-style store on wheels. Brez designed every inch of the Jeweled Barn to reflect the theme of a sophisticated English countryside tack room, complete with reclaimed wood, a green-plaid wall, and leather trunk-style cases.
“It’s inspired by the spirit of the equestrian lifestyle, both rustic and refined,” Brez says.
It’s designed with 11-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows so views of horses and grass fields are prominent. The walls are green, which is Brez’s brand color. Custom-made barn lights house jewelry-specific lighting that illuminates every case in the store. “I wanted it to look equestrian chic,” she says.
There’s an antique mirror shaped like a stirrup. All the bookshelves and beams are made of reclaimed barn wood. There’s even a couch of sorts, which is, fittingly, a 200-year-old wood and metal bench salvaged from a horse-drawn buggy.
Best of all for Brez’s purposes, the Jeweled Barn is portable. A bumper pull hitches to a truck, facilitating each move.
“It’s been a game changer in my business,” Brez says. “We go to about six shows a year with it. We’re four months in Florida, two weeks in Virginia, three months in Michigan, and we do shows in Maryland.”
Brez entered the jewelry business as an appraiser; now, her business has four components: appraising, equestrian show retail, Palm Beach brick-and-mortar, and a wholesale side.
Despite being pulled in many directions, Brez is always on site in the Jeweled Barn when it’s open. “It’s very important for my customers to meet the designer,” she says. Team members staff her Palm Beach location when she’s on the road.
“I had wanted more of a permanent structure for years,” she says. “After 10 years without air conditioning or a door, working in a tent, I thought it was essential to have something of my own with AC and a security system and a door.” Insurance requirements made showing jewelry in a tent problematic as well. Now, she has security cameras that run on wi-fi, cell network, and closed-circuit television and smash-resistant windows. The wheels lock at night and the hitch is removed.
“It has taken the horse show retail shopping world by storm,” she says. “People come by to look at it whether they love jewelry or not.”
Although Movable Roots typically needs six months to build a tiny house, they managed to condense the effort to less than three between October and December. The Jeweled Barn needed to be open the first week of January.
One nail-biting delay was related to showcases. Because there wasn’t enough time for shipping-container delivery from Asia, Brez became an importer to fly them next-day air, but they were still delayed in China, hung up in customs. “They arrived the day the tiny house had to be moved to the horse show,” she says. “They were installed one day and the tiny house left the next day!”
