5 Business Lessons From The Black Woman Building A Luxury Glassware Brand

Kimber Warren used her marketing background and knowledge of wine to launch Sela K hand-blown stemware.

Kimber Warren is a brand and marketing strategist who has spent more than 15 years creating campaigns for brands like Meta, Spotify, and Viacom. She’s also a lover of wine who offers educational wine experiences, including private and virtual tastings and wine list curation for events. But her love of glassware goes back even further.

“Growing up in Savannah, I spent time in both of my grandmothers’ homes, where there were china cabinets filled with beautiful glassware. Cleaning the glasses was a chore, but I became fascinated by the details—the shape, the weight, the color, the stems, even the way a drink looked once it was poured,” she shares.

“Glasses in my family were connected to family gatherings—celebratory moments that were handled with care. So glassware always represented more than function to me.”

Years later, Warren started thinking about glassware differently, noticing that most luxury glassware felt traditional or overly precious, while everyday glassware was practical but forgettable.

The idea to change that came to her one night. “I was out with one of my closest friends, having one of those conversations that makes you want to dream bigger about your life, and I remember looking down at the glass in my hand and thinking, ‘this object doesn’t match this moment,’” she says. “That thought stayed with me.”

In December 2025, Warren launched Sela K, a luxury glassware brand based in Atlanta that offers three different sculptural glasses in two colors. A second-generation glass artist hand-blows the pieces in Asheville, North Carolina.

Warren spoke with BLACK ENTERPRISE exclusively and shared five tips that entrepreneurs should know before launching a luxury home goods product:

Turn your inexperience into a strength

I was not a glassmaker. So I became a student of the category. I learned about hand-blown production, glass thickness, color development, balance, proportion, mold-making, and what happens when a beautiful sketch has to become an object someone can actually hold and use. In some ways, being an outsider helped. I wasn’t starting from “this is how glassware has always been made.” I was starting from “how do I want this to make someone feel?” and then working backward to figure out how to make it possible.

Research, research, and research some more

I approached the category the same way I’ve approached brand building throughout my career: by doing the research first. I spent a lot of time understanding the competitive landscape, how established glassware and home brands were positioned, where they were winning, and where I saw whitespace for something more expressive and design-led. I also commissioned competitive analysis early on, which helped me look at the category more objectively and think about where Sela K could stand apart rather than simply adding another glass to the market. Beyond tableware, I studied the luxury market more broadly. I wanted to understand what luxury actually means to different consumers, especially across age groups, because I knew I wasn’t trying to build a traditional luxury brand.

Make your manufacturer a real part of the process

Designing something on paper is one thing. Translating that design into hand-blown glass where heat, gravity, and the human hand are all part of the process is completely different. There were rounds of prototypes in which a stem was too thin or too heavy, a proportion wasn’t quite right, or a color reacted differently under heat than I expected. One of the biggest lessons was realizing that the best manufacturing relationship isn’t simply with someone who can technically make the product. It’s with a partner who understands what you are trying to communicate through the object and is willing to problem-solve with you until the design feels right.

Think beyond the product itself

You are not just launching a product. You are launching an entire standard. Once you position something as luxury, the customer experiences every detail as part of the product—the materials, the photography, the website, the packaging, the shipping experience, how quickly someone gets a response when they have a question. You can design an incredible object and still lose the customer if everything around it feels ordinary. The other lesson is that luxury requires patience. It’s tempting as a founder to rush because you want to get to market, start generating revenue, and prove the idea. But some things cannot be rushed without eventually showing up in the customer experience. I’ve learned that sometimes the most important founder decision is knowing when something is not ready yet.

Take advantage of resources for entrepreneurs

Founder programs were incredibly valuable. Being part of the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program pushed me to pressure-test the business side of Sela K — customer segments, margins, operations, revenue streams, and growth strategy. I also participated in several pitch competitions, and that repetition was important. Every time I had to explain Sela K in three or five minutes, I got clearer on what problem we were actually solving, who we were solving it for, and why the brand needed to exist. That combination of research, development, and constantly having to articulate the business helped turn Sela K from an idea I loved into a brand with a much sharper point of view.