Jordan Childs Richmond VA: Entrepreneur, Designer, What He’s Worth
Jordan Childs of Richmond, VA is a brand strategist, product designer, and former founder who built Shine Craft Vessel Co. from a 100-unit garage run into a nationally distributed drinkware brand...
Jordan Childs of Richmond, VA is a brand strategist, product designer, and former founder who built Shine Craft Vessel Co. from a 100-unit garage run into a nationally distributed drinkware brand stocked by Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters — then deliberately walked away from it. He now teaches at VCU Brandcenter and consults through his firm Major Easy.
That’s the short version. Here’s everything else.
Who Is Jordan Childs? The Richmond VA Answer
Jordan Childs (also appearing in some public records as Jordan Travis) was born in March 1982 and grew up primarily in Hartford and West Hartford, Connecticut. He earned a Master of Science from the VCU Brandcenter in 2009 — one of the most competitive graduate advertising programs in the United States — and spent the years immediately following in New York and San Francisco, working with major agencies including Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners and the LEGO Group, where he reached the level of Senior Marketing Manager for Branded Retail by 2011.
He moved back to Richmond in 2014. Not because he had to. Because he saw something.
“It doesn’t cost what it does to live in New York,” he told Richmond BizSense in 2014, explaining why he and his wife Kim returned to Central Virginia to launch their own ventures. That practical clarity — the ability to see a city not just for what it is but for what it enables — turns out to be a good preview of how he builds things.
Quick Definition: Jordan Childs Richmond VA refers to the creative entrepreneur, VCU Brandcenter alumnus and adjunct instructor, and founder of Shine Craft Vessel Co., based in Richmond and Henrico, Virginia. He is best known for growing a premium drinkware startup into a nationally recognized brand before selling it in December 2020.
The Shine Craft Vessel Story — What He Actually Built
In March 2014, Childs and Kim took their savings and manufactured 100 stainless steel beer growlers.
They sold out in two weeks.
That early product, the “Wander and Rumble” growler, was named a finalist in the Ledbury Launch Fund — a competition that drew 146 startup applicants from across the country. It wasn’t just the function that caught attention. It was the design thinking behind it. Childs wanted a growler that could sit on a dinner table and start a conversation rather than just hold beer. Double-walled, vacuum-sealed, built to keep cold drinks cold for 24 hours and hot items hot for ten — but also visually considered in a market full of generic stainless cylinders.
Within a few years, Shine Craft Vessel Co. had moved into Scott’s Addition (then Richmond’s fastest-growing creative district), was producing thousands of units, and had landed accounts with Blue Moon Brewing Co., Breckenridge Brewery, Urban Outfitters, and Nordstrom — many of them acquired, as Childs put it, by cold-calling. According to Richmond BizSense (2020), the company grew to generate between $300,000 and $400,000 in annual revenue before its sale.
Sixty percent of the finishing work — painting, illustration, logo application — stayed in Richmond throughout.
Here’s the thing: what separated Shine wasn’t just quality. It was that Childs treated every custom order as a creative brief. “The difference for Shine was we treated each order as a creative project,” he explained at the time of the sale. Every bottle had custom illustration. That positioning — craft drinkware as creative output, not commodity manufacturing — is what got them into Nordstrom.
Quick Comparison Table — Shine Craft Vessel Co. vs. Standard Growler Brands
| Option | Best For | Key Benefit | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shine Craft Vessel Co. | Breweries + retailers wanting branded custom drinkware | Custom illustration per order; design-led identity | Premium price point; sold in 2020 under new ownership |
| Generic stainless growler brands | Volume buyers seeking low-cost fills | Lower unit cost | No design differentiation |
| Mass-market drinkware (Hydro Flask, etc.) | Consumer retail | Wide distribution | Not customizable for breweries |
Jordan Childs Net Worth — What the Numbers Actually Suggest
He’s never disclosed a figure. And I’ve seen conflicting data — some aggregator sites cite numbers ranging from $500K to over $1M with no methodology shown, while others simply leave the field blank. My read, based on what’s verifiable: a mid-six-figure net worth is the most defensible estimate, not a millionaire-level exit.
Here’s the triangulation:
Shine Craft Vessel Co. ran for six years (2014–2020) and generated $300K–$400K annually in revenue. The sale price to a California couple was not disclosed — which is common for small consumer goods acquisitions in this revenue range, where deal multiples typically run 2–3x annual revenue. That would suggest a sale price in the range of $600K–$1.2M before expenses, taxes, and debt. Subtract operating costs, any outstanding liabilities, and a realistic tax burden, and the after-exit picture is comfortable but not transformative.
Childs spent the following years teaching at VCU as an adjunct — not the income profile of someone who sold out at a life-changing number.
Or maybe I should say it this way: the real value wasn’t the exit price. It was six years of building brand relationships with Nordstrom, six years of teaching himself manufacturing, illustration contracting, and cold-sales — skills he now uses teaching others at VCU Brandcenter and consulting through Major Easy.
This section reflects a reasonable estimate based on publicly available revenue figures and typical small-brand acquisition multiples. It is not financial advice and should not be treated as a verified net worth figure.
Post-Shine: VCU Brandcenter, Major Easy, and What Comes Next
Most profiles of Jordan Childs stop at the Shine Craft Vessel sale. That’s the gap.
Since 2019 — actually before the sale — Childs has been an adjunct faculty instructor at VCU Brandcenter, the same institution where he earned his master’s. He teaches brand strategy and creative thinking, and by his own account, uses Shine as a live case study. “You could probably interview one of my students and they’ll be like, ‘Oh we’re sick of hearing about all the mistakes you made or the things you learned with Shine,'” he said after the 2020 sale.
That’s a tell. Most founders with a clean exit pivot to the next venture with a polished narrative. Childs doubles down on the mess. That credibility reads differently in a classroom.
Alongside teaching, he operates Major Easy, a consulting practice focused on brand strategy and creative direction for businesses in and around Richmond. It’s a small, intentional operation — not a scaled agency — consistent with the pattern of someone who’s learned what happens when you optimize for growth over design integrity.
As of October 2023, Childs resides in Henrico, Virginia, having moved from a restored Church Hill home he and Kim renovated themselves — reinstalling crown molding, rebuilding the kitchen, restoring period details while maintaining modern livability. Kim runs Rare & Worthy, a vintage home décor curation business. The home they built together is, as Childs has said in interviews, one of his favorite things to walk into.
What Most People Get Wrong About Childs and Richmond
Some experts argue that Jordan Childs is primarily notable as a craft beer industry figure. That’s valid if you found him through the Shine Craft Vessel story. But if you’re dealing with the fuller arc — LEGO brand strategist, VCU-trained creative director, product designer, educator — the craft beer framing misses the point.
Shine was the expression. Brand strategy and design thinking were the actual tools.
Richmond gave him the conditions. Low cost, craft beer culture, a maker community at Eastern Land Collective, and a university system willing to let practitioners teach. He didn’t succeed despite Richmond. He succeeded because of how he read what Richmond could enable.
Most what-is-Jordan-Childs-worth articles miss that entirely. The most counter-intuitive thing here: the relatively modest sale price of Shine Craft Vessel Co. likely made him a better teacher and consultant than a bigger exit would have. He didn’t get to forget the hard parts.
Voice Search Q&A
Who is Jordan Childs from Richmond VA?
Jordan Childs is a Richmond, Virginia-based brand strategist, product designer, and the founder of Shine Craft Vessel Co. He also teaches at VCU Brandcenter and consults through his firm Major Easy.
What happened to Shine Craft Vessels?
Shine Craft Vessel Co. was sold in December 2020 to a California couple for an undisclosed sum. Jordan Childs ran the company for six years, growing it to clients including Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters.
What is Jordan Childs’s net worth?
No verified figure has been disclosed. Based on Shine Craft Vessel Co.’s reported annual revenue of $300K–$400K and standard small-brand acquisition multiples, a mid-six-figure net worth estimate is most defensible.
Where does Jordan Childs live now?
As of late 2023, Jordan Childs lives in Henrico, Virginia, having relocated from a Church Hill home in Richmond he and his wife Kim restored.
What does Jordan Childs do now after selling Shine?
He teaches brand strategy as an adjunct instructor at VCU Brandcenter and runs Major Easy, a Richmond-based creative consulting practice.
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