Ten years ago, two sisters with separate Etsy shops came together to form a single business. They called it Golden Gems after Golden Gem Road, where they’d grown up in Florida, and both Susan Logsdon and Amanda Helman almost immediately understood what the brand was about and what they wanted to do with it. One night, working late, maybe drinking some wine, they came up with a mantra, one they can still recite in flawless unison:
We, the Golden Gems, the former craft makers of America, do solemnly swear to make cool shit, hustle like a mother, take no shit, kill it like no other. Who run the world? Girls!
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Looking back on the moment they decided to join forces, they have only one question, which is what took them so long. The two youngest of five siblings in a wildly creative family, they’d always been extremely close and always loved making things. They’d even pretend they were on TV, talking about the stuff they made.
“We had a fake little craft show that we would do together,” Helman says. “We didn’t even record it. We just pretended there was a camera set up.”
And so, that day 10 years ago, “We were like, ‘What are we doing?’” Logsdon recalls. “‘Why are we doing this separate?’”
Indeed, from that moment, Golden Gems took off as if rocket fuel, and not sister power, was propelling it. Within two years of selling at craft shows together, they’d opened a studio on Cherokee Street. A year after that, they both quit their day jobs to focus on the business.
Today Logsdon, 39, and Helman, 35, are the “Head Badasses in Charge” of an empire that includes two stores, a bar, a bus, and products in 800 stores around the world. They’ve racked up more than $9 million in lifetime revenue, built on merchandise so distinctive, anyone who’s visited either of their two St. Louis stores would surely recognize it anywhere: colorful, foul-mouthed, and inclusive. (Their website is tagged “Gifts for the Unapologetic Girls, Gays, & Theys,” which nicely summarizes things.) They make stickers, candles, keychains, notecards, journals, sweatshirts, and hats. It’s almost never something you need, but it’s often so fun that you’d be hard-pressed to resist.
They both do a little of everything, though Logsdon is chiefly in charge of design while Helman takes responsibility for operations. Their products reflect a shared sensibility where the whole is more interesting than the sum of its parts. Says Logsdon, “I’m a little sweeter, and Amanda’s a little…”
“I have to push the boundaries and I’m a little edgier, I guess,” Helman finishes.
“So a lot of my things I was making were very sweet and girly, and Amanda’s were just a little, like …” says Logsdon.
“Tougher,” Helman says, right as Logsdon herself says it. Helman continues, “Yeah, you know, I was the one who introduced the F-word.”
Now the F-word is definitely there, as is the S-word, in a way that seems perfectly natural to anyone under the age of 30 but can be jarring to anyone from a more reticent era. For just under two years, the sisters had a store at West County Center (it closed at the end of 2024), which exposed them to a different sort of customer than the city residents and intrepid city visitors they’d been used to. Says Helman, “That’s where we, I think, got the most like emails to the mall.”
She adds, “Sometimes we would print them out and then put them up in the back. It was very funny.” The mall, they add, was very supportive, and they only decided to close because they felt they were stretched too thin.
Says Logsdon, “It’s like, it could have been really successful, but it was sucking resources from all the other areas, and we were like, ‘We just need to consolidate. We can’t keep doing this.’”
Their growth plans now are focused on experiences. Instead of a new store, they’ve purchased and retrofitted a bus into a store and a bar on wheels—perfect for trips to show their work in other cities or pop-ups around St. Louis. They’re also focused on the events they can host at their bar or their stores. Toxed and Tatted, a twice-annual event involving both Botox and tattoos, is a favorite, and one that illustrates their goal of trying to make new things less scary and give people permission to own their badass selves.
“We really love creating these experiences you can’t get anywhere else,” says Helman. “It’s not just a retail store, it’s not just a bar. It’s also an experience that you can come into, and it’s hopefully going to be something new and different every time.”
It was their father who helped retrofit the bus, which was, in some ways, a full circle moment: Before the two youngest children were born, the family lived in a bus, and Logsdon and Helman grew up hearing stories about their period in their parents’ and older siblings’ lives. The way they describe it, they had a wild childhood in the best way, with their dad at point erecting a 750-foot zip line across their eight-acre backyard. Recalls Helman, “The way you would stop was just like a stack of eight mattresses, and he just, like, tied them all together so you could slam into these mattresses.”
That kind of upbringing gave them a certain fearlessness that still guides them today. “It all kind of comes naturally to all of us,” says Logsdon of their siblings. “I think we’re always thinking of the next crazy idea and what can we do.”
That they built their company in St. Louis is more or less an accident—but they also consider the low cost of living here and the ease of entry a key factor in their ascent. It’s also part of their brand, as one recent Instagram post makes clear.
It was Logsdon who moved to the Midwest first, to study music at Greenville College, and from there, she gravitated to St. Louis without overthinking it. (Greenville, says Logsdon, is about 40 minutes from St. Louis, “so that’s kind of like the big city we would come to.”) Helman followed her both to Greenville and St. Louis, where she earned a graduate degree in art from WashU.
“I like that it’s not a New York or an LA, but there’s still really cool stuff here that you would find in New York or LA,” says Helman. “We feel really grateful to be in St. Louis and to be able to do what we do there.”
Adds Logsdon, “There’s so much potential, and I think it’s so rewarding for us to be a part of the growth of the city.” They now live just a few minutes away from each other in South City.
For all their closeness—emotional and geographic—working together hasn’t always been easy. Two years ago, they started going to couples therapy together.
“It had been kind of a tough year,” Helman acknowledges. “There’s obviously ups and downs in business, and so we had some tough things we’d gone through, and we were just at each other’s throats.”
“We were fighting all the time,” says Logsdon.
“We knew we weren’t actually mad at each other,” Helman says. “But it was easier just to fight, and so we were like, ‘OK, we’ve gotta do something.’”
Now they regularly each see their therapist, both separately and together. They say the joint sessions have been invaluable—and from the way they expertly trade perspectives and jump in to finish each other’s thoughts, it’s clear they’re in sync.
Their sister act isn’t just their origin story. It’s the key to the empire they’ve built, and continue to grow.
“Because we are just so honest with each other, I think we’re able to get things done a little faster and just cut through stuff, just make decisions, even if we hurt each other’s feelings sometimes,” Logsdon says. “We know we’re going to hurt each other’s feelings, but we always come back together and make up and apologize.”
And in that way, they’ve made good on that mantra they dreamed up over wine all those years ago. They make cool shit, hustle like a mother, take no shit, kill it like no other.
Who run the world? Golden Gems.
Golden Gems celebrates its 10th anniversary with a block party at City Foundry on October 10. They’re also launching their bus, The Gem, in October.
