![]() ![]() “But we were kind of flying by the seat of our pants.”Īs they began delving into NBA brackets and researching moisturizers, the couple relied on Gorjana’s newfound jewelry-making hobby to keep them afloat. “We knew we wanted to do something together,” said Jason. ![]() Sure that they didn’t want to pursue traditional 9-5 jobs and buoyed by their shared entrepreneurial spirit, Gorjana and Jason stayed up most nights brainstorming ideas for companies they’d start a men’s skincare company, perhaps, or maybe a sports management firm, specializing in new recruits to the NBA. At the time Jason and Gorjana, who originally met as undergraduates at Arizona State University, were in the midst of something of a “finding ourselves” period, Jason having just graduated Pepperdine Law and Gorjana recently taking leave from the Newport Beach fine jewelry designer where she’d worked since graduating ASU. ![]() First-time entrepreneurs when they launched gorjana, Jason and Gorjana had no business plan, no funding, and about as little ambition for their fledgling jewelry line when they began selling a small inventory of necklaces in 2004 on consignment at local boutiques. In many ways, this is how Gorjana and Jason built their company brick by brick, necklace by necklace, sale by sale. Now with their own store open just a few miles away, I asked Jason if he felt like they’d achieved that climb. “I remember thinking, ‘It’s going to be a long climb to get back to this quality of life.’” “We would always say, we were peaking, living in this amazing guesthouse in Paradise Cove,” Jason said. At some point, invariably, one or the other would make their running joke at the time. He was 26 at the time, Gorjana 22, and on clear mornings they would sit on their doorstep, the spectacular blue of the pacific spanning just a few feet away from them to eternity. Standing outside the Malibu store a few days after its opening, Jason tells me the first home he and Gorjana lived in together was in Malibu, a tiny Paradise Cove guesthouse they rented during his final year at Pepperdine Law School, just a few miles from where he’s standing now. Their 11th brick-and-mortar location, the Malibu opening is particularly close to Jason and Gorjana’s hearts, symbolizes something of a culmination of the adolescent dream which spurred the 15-year adventure which has been gorjana. However if there are many things towards which Jason and Gorjana demonstrate an almost infectious laid-back calm the hellish 405 commute from Laguna Beach to L.A., launching a store within a few days of their children starting a new school year, plans to open many more brick-and-mortar stores within the next few years about just as much, they still find themselves giddy.One of these things is the new Malibu gorjana store, an airy, light-filled space that opened in the Malibu Village last month. Disarmingly down-to-earth, Gorjana and Jason are warm and funny in a way that’s impossible to begrudge, quick to laugh, charmingly self-effacing and both possessed of that most magical yet rare of Southern Californian attributes: laid-back, but not in an annoying way. What’s even more insufferable? They’re not like that at all. Add to this the incredible success of gorjana, which has grown into a multi-million-dollar company since it was founded in 2004, now employing over 100 employees and available at 1,000+ retailers worldwide, and Jason and Gorjana start to sound like the kind of annoyingly-perfect people you might stick on a vision board, but are definitely not trying to hang out with any time soon. Gorjana and Jason, the husband-and-wife team behind Laguna Beach-based jewelry brand gorjana, are the kind of good-looking that just invites sidewalk-envy-turned-scorn are both blue-eyed and tall and have the mega-watt smiles of models, which they used to be. If you passed them on the street and didn’t know them, you could hardly be faulted for taking an instant disliking to Gorjana Reidel and Jason Griffin Reidel. Written by Holly Bieler | Photographed by Julie Wuellner ![]()
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