How jewelry brand Gorjana found its place in sports

It’s a big weekend for jewelry brand Gorjana. Mothers and daughters are a major part of its audience, and with Mother’s Day coming up Sunday, the company is in the midst of a marketing push.

The campaign highlights Gorjana’s recent move into athlete partnerships, with Portland Thorns FC forward Reilyn Turner and her family making an appearance. The brand’s growing roster of athletes also boasts tennis, volleyball, and basketball players, including Los Angeles Sparks forward Cameron Brink and 2026 No. 4 overall draft pick Lauren Betts, who tip off their WNBA season over the weekend.

The athletes are part of the Gorjana Sports Club, an initiative that formally kicked off last summer as a multichannel effort to build brand awareness, according to Director of Marketing Jennifer Darrow. After seeing sports content overperform for the brand, Darrow said she’s responding by doubling down on women athletes, with the potential for broader sponsorships to come.

“We are partnering with athletes as our brand ambassadors,” Darrow told Marketing Brew. “We don’t do a lot in the media and entertainment space. We don’t have a lot of celebrity or influencer partners…these are the women who we want to be speaking on our behalf, and so we see that as a long-term relationship.”

Drafting

The Gorjana marketing team didn’t actively recruit its first athlete partner; she reached out to the brand. In 2023, pro tennis player Jessie Pegula, a finalist at the 2024 US Open, approached Gorjana and said she wears its jewelry when she plays, according to Darrow, who joined from Nike last year. Pegula became Gorjana’s first athlete ambassador from there, and has since starred in ads and created social content with the brand. Women tennis players around the world are popular picks for brand endorsements.

“It was a huge, eye-opening opportunity” for the Gorjana team, Darrow said. The Gorjana Sports Club officially rolled out in August with a campaign headlined by Pegula and Brink.

Inspired by their relationship with Pegula, Darrow said her team sought to build its athlete roster with other women who were already wearing Gorjana—or at least with women for whom “personal style and jewelry is very much a part of who they are.” They also look for players “who are at the top of their game” and who can serve as role models for younger athletes, she added.

In addition to Pegula, Brink, Turner, and Betts, the jewelry brand’s roster now includes Sienna Betts, Lauren’s younger sister and a freshman forward for the 2026 NCAA Championship-winning UCLA women’s basketball team; Brooke Nuneviller and Merritt Beason of the Omaha Supernovas in the Pro Volleyball Federation; and Kyra Zaengle, a beach volleyball player at USC.

“We are really, really thoughtful about who we sign,” Darrow said. “We’re not an Adidas. We’re not a Nike. We can’t carry a roster of 70, so we have to be pretty selective and pretty intentional about where we’re able to build into partnerships that we know we want to maintain in the long term.”

Getting active

Darrow and her team work with athletes across activations, including commercials, social content, and in-person events. All their contracts have social components, Darrow said, while IRL engagements are more tailored to each player: Pegula often does in-store meet and greats while she travels for tournaments, while Brink has attended “brand dinners” with friends and sports leaders.

The Gorjana Sports Club commercial is “one of our top-performing pieces of content,” Darrow told us, while sports-focused content across platforms tends to outperform non-sports-related posts. Those data points reinforced the idea that “this is something our consumers really are connecting to and really respond to,” she said.

Along with the brand’s Mother’s Day focus, the marketing team is preparing to work with Betts as she transitions from college to the pros—the first time Gorjana will be making that shift with an athlete partner. (After cheering for Betts during March Madness, they styled her for the draft, Darrow said.) They’re letting her settle into WNBA life before deciding on their next campaign.

As of last September, Gorjana is also involved in sports beyond individual athletes. The brand has a sponsorship deal with Arizona State University Athletics, which encompasses all of the school’s women athletes and its Sun Devil Spirit Squad. Darrow said she’s open to other college and university deals down the line, and while she’s largely focused on the athlete roster for now, her team is interested in pursuing conversations about pro team partnerships, too.

No matter how Gorjana’s sports work evolves, the main priority will be to foster meaningful relationships with athletes, Darrow said—something that’s still on display after partnering with Pegula three years ago.

“Every single time she is on TV, she is wearing at least seven to 10 Gorjana pieces,” Darrow said. “You start to see that really genuine, long-standing brand connection, and I think that serves as a much stronger validator than a single one-off paid partnership.”