How Catbird designs its collaborations

Sometimes the best partnerships start with a maintenance request.

That’s, in part, how Catbird’s latest collab with writer and comedian Jenny Slate came to be—one that led to “peak traffic” to the jewelry brand’s site and hit its sales goals when the products went live late last month, Sriya Karumanchi, director of marketing and communications at Catbird, told Marketing Brew.

Since 2019, the 20-year-old New York-based jewelry company has also worked with musician Phoebe Bridgers and her band boygenius, stylist Leith Clark, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on custom collections. The Bridgers collection, in particular, led to “record-breaking” site traffic, per Karumanchi.

“When we collaborate with a muse or a tastemaker or any talent that we really admire, one of the things we really look for is authenticity through them being a fan of the brand or an existing customer,” Karumanchi said, adding that the frequency of collabs is based on the right opportunity arising, rather than any sort of quota.

In Slate’s case, Karumanchi said the comedian has been “wearing our jewelry for years,” and purchased her wedding band from the company. Back-and-forth communications on jewelry maintenance and styling for various public appearances led to thoughts of—and emails around—a potential collection.

“From our creative director to our head of social media…to our founder and CEO, everyone was like, ‘Oh, yeah, she’s a Catbird woman,’” Karumanchi said. “When the gut-check is that cohesive across all those people, we know it’s the right thing to go for.”

Chain reaction

So what, exactly, constitutes a Catbird woman? According to Karumanchi, it’s “kindness, creativity, having a point of view about their personal style and what makes them feel good and what makes them feel beautiful, not chasing trends, having an affinity for more casual luxury,” and, perhaps most importantly, “unfussiness, which is a huge thing for us.”

Once collaborators like Slate are identified, Karumanchi said they’re often encouraged to share objects, words, and images that spark a connection or hold meaning for them, whether that’s a lyric or a family heirloom. From there, the in-house design team comes up with jewelry ideas that embody those things while staying true to Catbird’s self-described “deceptively simple” and delicate look.

Pieces in Slate’s collection are inspired by various aspects of her life, like a Shell Bell Charm that references bells her mom tied to her shoelaces when she was a kid and subtly nods to her work as the writer and voice of Marcel the Shell. As Slate notes in a TikTok video for Catbird, much of the collection’s look is based on her grandmother’s jewelry and the idea of wearing a “tiny bit of magic.”

“She just knew instantly what she wanted to create,” Karumanchi said. “She had such a strong vision.”

Because Slate’s collection centers around themes of childhood nostalgia and motherhood, Karumanchi said it was a perfect collection to release and continue promoting ahead of Mother’s Day.

Works like a charm

Speaking from experience, Karumanchi said focusing on intentional, personal partnerships and authenticity is what has resonated with the Catbird community.

“We’ve gone through a few early stages of doing it in a more forced way where we think maybe we should be tapping into this audience size or this person with this platform or this type of appeal, and it has felt very forced,” Karumanchi said. “And I don’t think that the designs that would be born out of that would have been as exciting.”

In addition to drumming up community conversation on social via teasers and cross-promotional posts with Slate, Karumanchi said that the collection led to a lift in foot traffic across Catbird’s brick-and-mortar locations the day it dropped.

“Anecdotally, the store managers said that they had some really nice connections with people who came in and wanted to take a peek at [the collection] and had a memory of the first time they came to know Jenny or a favorite movie or comedic moment of hers,” she said.

Having seen positive results from collaborations with high-profile partners like Slate and Bridgers who have loyalty and connection with fans built-in, Karumanchi said the brand is wary of “going down the path of being a celebrity jewelry brand” and wants to “keep an open mind” about future partnerships.

“Our creative director, Leigh, is often like, ‘I would love to work with a scientist,’ so it’s not always going to be exactly the high-profile formula,” she said.

In the meantime, Karumanchi is excited to see the latest collab pieces out in the wild, including on Slate herself.

“It’s the best feeling to know that we got it right and designed something that she’s going to wear for years and keep and that it’s going to be a future heirloom for her,” Karumanchi said. “It would be quite a bummer if we never saw our collaboration pieces on our partners, but we haven’t had that happen yet.