Creating new, bigger niche

FINDING AN EDGE AT HOME: Soon after taking over the family jewelry manufacturing business, Stefanie Taylor added new designing staff, many locally based, to create unique merchandise, one of the reasons sales continue to grow. With her at Gennaro's Cranston facility are Lindsay Fornaciari, left, and Jordan Mele, both junior merchants. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
FINDING AN EDGE AT HOME: Soon after taking over the family jewelry manufacturing business, Stefanie Taylor added new designing staff, many locally based, to create unique merchandise, one of the reasons sales continue to grow. With her at Gennaro's Cranston facility are Lindsay Fornaciari, left, and Jordan Mele, both junior merchants. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Stefanie Taylor, president of Gennaro Inc. in Cranston, started working at the company while attending the Lincoln School in Providence. As a college student, she continued to work summers at the third-generation, family-owned supplier of fashion jewelry and accessories. In 2002, after working in New York, she moved back to her home state to work at Gennaro for good.

Taylor started in sales, traveling and meeting with fashion-jewelry buyers. In four years, she helped increase sales 30 percent. By 2006, she was named president of the company.

“As president, Stefanie saw an untapped niche … to create a full-service design and merchandising division,” wrote nominator Amy Tormey, director of marketing and business development.

Taylor enlisted local talent – mainly Rhode Island School of Design graduates – to join Gennaro’s design and merchant team. Now, the company could provide unique designs it previously could not offer customers, said Tormey who nominated Taylor for recognition by Providence Business News.

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In Taylor’s nine years as president, Gennaro has more than doubled its revenue. At the heart of that growth is Taylor’s work mentoring young women.

“The team I have in place is made up of a lot of young women who have worked with me since college. We believe in mentoring within the company,” said Taylor.

Taylor has seen proof-positive results of others having faith in her abilities, and seeks out opportunities to give back. “I [attribute] the success I have experienced thus far to the incredible support system I have in my family and in the Gennaro team we have built,” she said. “They are behind me, executing every step of the way.”

For Taylor, the success she has achieved in the company inspires her to give back outside as well. She is a professional mentor at Providence College for the school’s Women in Business classes. She sits on the board of the Lincoln School. And she is a professional mentor for Strong Women Strong Girls, a Boston nonprofit. •

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