Marketplace is a Latin Post feature profile series about Latino entrepreneurs who have successfully turned their ideas into thriving enterprises. From unsung startups to prominent businesses, we spotlight the dynamic men and women who founded them.  

With all eyes on the upcoming release of the Apple Watch, wearable technology seems on the verge of moving beyond early-stage curiosities and into the mainstream. But even now, with the full force and cachet of Apple behind the concept, healthy skepticism remains as to whether smartwatches -- even Apple's version -- will ever reach as large an audience as smartphones did. 

Judy Tomlinson -- founder and CEO of the two year-old smart jewelry startup FashionTEQ -- is poised to offer something different; something that may catch fire with a huge segment of consumers who find even the slickest smartwatches too awkward to wear, much less to buy.

That's because FashionTEQ puts priority on integrating style with discrete functionality -- a focus on what everyday women actually want to wear, and what they want the tech to do, that's as unique to the technology industry as its founder.

FashionTEQ: A Unique Take on Wearables

"I'm my own customer," said Tomlinson in an exclusive interview with Latin Post. "I know what women would like -- at least a majority of them."

Listening to the women close to her -- and trusting her own intuition -- is how Tomlinson realized the essence behind FashionTEQ and its first product, Zazzi. Unlike unwieldy do-it-all smartwatches that put form behind function, Zazzi emphasizes fashion aesthetics, extending only the core smartphone functions that women want most. "Minimalist function" may not be a fashionable term in the technology industry, but Tomlinson has insightful reasoning behind her approach.

(Photo : FashionTEQ)

"So what's really important to women is jewelry that works with their outfits," Tomlinson said. "Women are emotional about fashion because it makes them look good," she added, "but another thing they're emotional about is staying connected to their friends, family, girlfriends, boyfriend, parents..."

"Staying connected -- not missing a call, text, email, social post, or something that tells us something about another person," is the other core concern for most women, said Tomlinson, and doing so with subtlety is best.

FashionTEQ aims to fulfill both of those needs, but then doesn't pile on additional functions like health tracking and the like. "I'm not replacing the phone, I'm just enhancing the communication while the phone is in your purse or somewhere else that you cannot get to."

It Takes a Unique Background

Tomlinson doesn't have a monopoly on knowing what women want, of course, but she is particularly well qualified for getting those new ideas to market. But she didn't always know she'd end up trailblazing the smart jewelry industry.

"I fell into this. I think I was pushed and forced into this by the universe," she said, laughing.

For Tomlinson, it's been a long -- and, at times, quite uncertain -- road to FashionTEQ. One-hundred percent Latina (she took her British husband's last name), Tomlinson grew up in a family in Southern California where none of the women had ever been to college.

"I didn't grow up in a very affluent neighborhood." she added, "It was actually a scary one, so I made it a point to get my education because I didn't want my future kids growing up where I did."

Luckily, ever since junior high, Tomlinson found she had a talent for math -- "just a natural thing" -- and loved science. "I would ace all the classes," she said.

At the suggestion of her cousin she ended up going into engineering, eventually earning an electrical engineering degree from California State University Northridge, paying for it herself and through a felloship from the Department of Energy. At the time, she says, "I, basically, was the only woman in my engineering classrooms."

After school, she found engineering work in a slew of different environments: "I worked in nuclear waste, I worked at Lockheed, I worked with HP as a field engineer," she said. "All of the experience that I've had has helped me get where I am today."

Working for a couple of startups and as an independent consultant, Tomlinson later realized she wanted more business knowledge. "I went back to school and got an executive MBA," said Tomlinson. "When I got out, it was around 2008."

When the Universe Hit the Reset Button

With her MBA in hand, Tomlinson set her sights on a job at an elite consulting firm and passed "with flying colors," as she put it. She said she was literally at the stage where HR was filing paperwork when the company instituted a hiring freeze.

All progress stopped, and suddenly Tomlinson found herself extremely experienced and qualified -- without a single place that would hire her.

"The recession came in 2008, and I tried to get a job at so many different places," she recounted. "And I thought, 'What's wrong with me? I'm a woman engineer. I have an MBA. I'm a minority! What's wrong with me?'"

She decided to focus on raising her kids and "just go ahead and relax a little bit."

Which is right when inspiration hit her from her daily life, leading quickly to her first startup, AvocSoft.

"I actually went to a jewelry party... and I was listening to women talk about their problems. And of course, as an engineer, I was trained to listen to problems and come up with a solution," she laughed. "They were talking about how they don't know how much money they spend: cash, check, credit card, things like that."

"So that night, I started developing 'My Weekly Budget,' an app for iOS that ended up being number one finance app in the iTunes store 10 times over since 2010," according to Tomlinson.

With AvocSoft, Tomlinson found success by listening to everyday women: "I was getting my hair done -- and I'm not working in the technical world at this point, so I'm living my life as a woman, let's just put it that way," she mentioned, laughing. "And the hair stylist was working with paper: using cards and writing down information about her clients." Her second hit, "My Book of Clients," a business app tailored for salons, was born.

"I Should Be Doing Hardware"

In 2013, looking for ideas to develop another app, Tomlinson went to Las Vegas and took in the Consumer Electronics Show. That show was when the first buzzworthy smartwatches, like the Pebble, debuted.

"When I came back from CES, I knew that I should not just be doing apps," she said. "I should be doing hardware."

Later, walking around malls, she thought to herself, "Where do I not see tech?" The answer was jewelry stores.

Tomlinson had been hosting a friend of hers, a jewelry designer, who lost her house in the recession. "So she would take me along to all these places," like fashion industry events, "and I saw her design some jewelry," she recalled. "I thought, 'Wow, this is pretty similar to what mechanical engineering is!' It was easy for me to pick up on that."

So she started working on designing jewelry, engineering smartphone-connected components and began bootstrapping FashionTEQ from AvocSoft's success. The first wearable was the hardest. "It was like I was going through a task where I have to cut down the trees and branches before me, because at the time, jewelers had never talked to engineers," she said.

Luckily, by that time she was a bit of both.

Her debut of FashionTEQ was at the next year's CES. Her prototypes, which she named Zazzi, were the only smart wearables in the show's fashion-wear section. "My first product," she acknowledged, "didn't look jewelry-like, but it had enough tech in there where a women could see that it was useful."

And again, she listened to women. "I got a lot of feedback," she said, which led her to partner with Austrian crystal designer Swarovski while she reworked generation two to be smaller, more tech-integrated, and have "more bling."

FashionTEQ's Head Start in the Smart Jewelry Race

"If you look at my product from 2014, you can see that it's basically a tech point of view of jewelry. I have more fashion sense than that."

Generation two, still in the making, features Swarovski crystal, a color screen, lots of style versatility, and the same emphasis on discrete smartphone functionality.

(Photo : FashionTEQ)

Notifications through the Zazzi app come in the form of beautiful images that are customizable to specific contacts, so wearers get the information they need in an understated -- imperceptible for onlookers -- fashion. It also notifies wearers if they've left their phone behind.

And to make sure Zazzi is ready to melt even further into the background of everyday life, "I'm making it interchangeable," said Tomlinson. "Women change their clothes every day. Women are not at the same function in a given day: they will be at a park in the morning, work during the day, and at a gala at night."

"So the Zazzi can interchange, and can be a pendant, a bracelet... a ring... I can dress it up or dress it down," she said. "The beauty of it is it fits your lifestyle... not only will we wear it all the time, but women will stay connected."

Tomlinson is confident there is "a whole sea of women out there -- like you look at the ocean and that's the women I'm talking about," who love jewelry and staying connected, but remain untouched by the big tech companies' various fitness bands and smartwatches.

"I just want to know when my kid gets home from school or... if my friends are at the restaurant," she says, intoning the voice of the women she designed Zazzi for. "They just want to know those things, but they don't want anything complicated."

In a way, Silicon Valley's dearth of female representation has given Tomlinson and her startup a head start over the usual big industry players, and FashionTEQ is now entertaining some big investors, getting noticed by major companies, and collecting influential supporters like Manos Accelerator's David Lopez (who also happens to be JLo's dad).

And because of her years of experience in a male-dominated field, she's got her pitch down cold.

"I've talked to men throughout my years," she laughs, "From university to going into industry, and my whole life I've been in business environments with men."

"So now I know," she continues, "when I go to explain the jewelry" to a group of all men, "I always ask, 'Can you please bring a woman into our meeting?'"

"I want you to see her reaction.'"

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