Such is the brand of luxury leather goods Osaka unveiled Friday at the Fame to Fortune Summit, a daylong conference organized by the affluent community-building organization Uncharted that aimed to connect celebrities flirting with potential business ideas with investors eager to fund them. Osaka showcased a prototype of one of her handbag creations during a chat alongside her business partner Mike Cherman, the founder of the Los Angeles streetwear line Chinatown Market, in which she called the brand her “biggest dream” outside of tennis.
Osaka’s conversation, in between her practice rounds at this year’s U.S. Open, was one of the keynote panels during the daylong confab, held at the sprawling Southampton, New York, shoreside estate of Uncharted co-founder Michael Loeb. Variety was one of the conference’s five media partners alongside Yahoo, Fortune, the New York Stock Exchange and Culture.
Jackson, 24, says that while the summit was the first time she’d attended an event so heavily focused on business, it tapped into her entrepreneurial spirit as she batted around three different venture ideas (all of which she declined to share with Variety).
It’s a goal Loeb and his Uncharted co-founder Justin Barth hoped the Fame to Fortune Summit would achieve for its attendees, with the two using their opening remarks to implore the hundreds of guests under the setup dining tent to break away from the communities they came with and network with someone new to help capitalize on their celebrity as they think about new businesses.
“I don’t think anybody is going to walk out of here today with a $100 million business or a billion-dollar business, but you’re going to come out with ideas, and also some of the enablers that are going to help you do it,” Loeb said.
Kleiman tells Variety that he didn’t really know much about the event when he was approached, but Loeb’s involvement and more time to network among the Hamptons crowd helped spur his participation.
“I’m not trying to come offstage and close a deal,” he says. “It’s fascinating to always meet people and see how what we’re working on connects with people. I think we all live in our bubbles … The more you get out of the world, the more you’re outside around people — that’s the best news of what’s happening. Social media can give you a very skewed indication. Real life, and understanding what people are talking about, what they’re wearing, what they’re interested in — that, to me, is the best case study and research that I can do. So I always look at those opportunities.”
