Even before she created the jewelry brand Zayla, Casey Brown was a builder—although her tools haven’t been lumber, nails, and drywall.

Brown specializes in e-commerce, so you could call her a digital builder. Her tools are marketing and advertising strategies for brands, including those in the jewelry and accessories industry.

She used her experience at tech companies, including Facebook and news website Mashable, to start Uppercase Brands, a digital marketing agency that helps online companies grow. Zayla debuted in 2023 as the first in-house brand for Uppercase.

Brown says she has put everything she knows about business, entrepreneurship, and finding an audience for products into Zayla. Her career path is unlike that of most jewelry company founders, but she says she couldn’t be happier in this space.

“After helping so many e-commerce brands scale, I had always had a dream of starting my own brand,” Brown says. “I just needed to wait until the timing was right to self-fund the business. Zayla is truly a labor of love. It’s the culmination of years of hard work and grit.”

Brown grew up in Charlotte, N.C., and her first jewelry memory is a sweet one: Her dad frequently traveled for business and would bring her small gifts to soothe her feelings of missing him while he was gone.

“He came home from a business trip to New Mexico and brought me back a silver cuff bracelet, one of the first pieces of jewelry I ever owned. The bracelet was very simple, with two strands twisted like a rope, and I loved it,” Brown says. “I wore it all the time, and it was a reminder of my dad every time I looked down at it. This was probably the first time I experienced jewelry as a symbol of love and care.”

During high school, Brown worked summer jobs as a babysitter, a salon receptionist, and an Apple Store associate. In college, she did a summer internship at a global ad agency in New York City, sparking her interest in advertising and creative storytelling.

Brown graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2013 with a degree in journalism with a focus on advertising and a minor in entrepreneurship. She moved to New York City permanently and joined the marketing team at Mashable, which covers technology, social media, and digital culture, among other subjects.

“It was the most amazing job I could have hoped for right out of college because I was given enormous responsibility from the beginning,” says Brown. “Some of my favorite projects included designing an interactive experience at South by Southwest and developing a content strategy for the Social Good Summit, a conference about the intersection of technology and social good.”

She moved on to Facebook in 2015. For a year she worked in its advertising technology group, and she learned how digital advertising was changing that industry’s landscape. Facebook’s large, corporate setting also taught her about working with teams, building processes, prioritizing, and organizing.

After founding Uppercase Brands on her own in 2016, she mostly served as a consultant. But in 2020, Uppercase’s business exploded, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic, and it became a full-service agency. Since then, Uppercase has worked with 50 different brands in the fashion, beauty, food, and home goods sectors.

When she was coming up with the idea for Zayla, Brown thought about what she would like to do and about the team she’d built at Uppercase—and jewelry made sense for a number of reasons.

She planned to self-fund, so it had to be a product that holds its value, in case the business didn’t work out and she had to sell her inventory. Plus, the product had to be small enough to ship and store inexpensively (something she’d learned from her involvement in e-commerce at Uppercase).

Jewelry was also a good choice because it doesn’t require the user to taste, smell, or touch it to be interested. Most important, the new company had to sell something that Brown and her staff loved.

“We knew we would be pouring a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this new brand, so a product and brand we were excited about was critical,” she says. “Jewelry checked all of our key boxes, and as a heavy consumer myself, I was so excited to get into the space.”

Zayla gives its customers lightweight designs, gold, and lab-grown diamond jewelry that is on trend yet made to last.

“Our philosophy is that you shouldn’t have to choose between affordability and style in order to have jewelry that lasts a lifetime,” Brown says.

Top: Casey Brown founded jewelry brand Zayla in 2023 after a career specializing in e-commerce and marketing. (Photos courtesy of Zayla)

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