Ep 53: What does it take to build a brand 40 years in the making?

Matt Westmore — father, husband, and founder of purepixxi — has spent his life inside the jewelry world. He grew up in his family's South African fashion accessories business, traveled with his parents to factories in the Far East from the time he was knee-high, and went on to a corporate career through Ted Baker, MR Porter, and Nike. But it was a series of personal losses — a 20-week pregnancy loss, a redundancy from Nike, and a rare neurological diagnosis that gradually took the use of his dominant hand — that ultimately pointed him toward the brand he was meant to build.

In this conversation, Matt and Sarah go deep on the long road that led to purepixxi— the "Ferrari of kids' jewelry." Born from Matt's own health journey, his four-year-old daughter's coming rite of passage, and decades of watching how the sausage really gets made in the global jewelry industry, purepixxi is a refusal to cut corners on what goes into a child's body — and a quiet challenge to an entire industry built on slogans like "hypoallergenic" that mean almost nothing.

Along the way, they unpack what real mentorship looks like (Matt's dad sounds like Yoda), why a room of entrepreneurs at Funnel Hacking Live cracked something open in him that Nike's smoke machines never could, and how Matt keeps his faith intact through seasons most people would walk away from.

In this episode:

✔️ Why "corporate disposability" is real — and what Matt's father saw a full year before Nike made him redundant

✔️ The truth about 24k vs. 14k vs. 9k gold, and why most kids' jewelry is built on cost-cutting instead of safety

✔️ Why "hypoallergenic" is the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" of the jewelry industry

✔️ How to choose a mentor when you don't have one, and why life mentors often beat business mentors

✔️ What it looks like to keep building — and keep believing — through grief, redundancy, and a diagnosis you never saw coming

Checkout purepixxi

Books Mentioned:

Overdeliver by Brian Kurtz

The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Connect with Sarah on Facebook