Jennifer Carolyn King has been an entrepreneur since she was eight years old. Today, she and her partner, Timothy Fredel are building a lifestyle media enterprise called Rugged Elegance which is focused on inspiring healthy, adventuresome and soulful living.

While Rugged Elegance, LLC has its roots in San Francisco, the soul of the company is every "rugged elegant" person, place and product on earth.

The mission of the company is to identify and promote select people and places deemed "rugged elegant." From these places the company aims at selling high-end, quality products and services to an online global audience of like-minded people. The company calls this contextual commerce.

Twenty years ago, Jennifer was asked to define her unique style.

"Rugged Elegant" was the answer.

Since 1984, it has been Jennifer's dream to create a lifestyle media business which promotes 1) like-minded people who share Tim and Jennifer's healthy, adventuresome, soulful spirit, 2) unpretentious yet luxurious places to experience throughout the world, and 3) brand-defining products that best serve their online global community.

At the core of their enterprise, Tim and Jennifer have created a suite of web sites together with a series of high-end travel guides which promote "rugged elegant" hotels, restaurants, shops and services, neighborhood-by-neighborhood. Select Establishments in San Francisco (and soon other destinations around the world) are profiled in RuggedElegance.com, as well as people who resonate with or who have a business that resonates with this timeless aesthetic which Tim and Jennifer call "rugged elegant."

Where RuggedElegance.com profiles places and a marketplace of products, RuggedElegantLiving.com is a high traffic site (in the top 60,000 of all web sites) where the story behind selected people, places, products, performances, prose and photographs get told.

The stories published in Rugged Elegant Living correlate with related products that are available for purchase through The Rugged Elegance World Marketplace.

Next on the horizon ... Select Establishments profiled in RuggedElegance.com will be invited to create an online boutique within a marketplace that is currently selling over $15 million worth of "rugged elegant" products each year via the company's affiliation with Amazon.

The next time you purchase apparel, baby products, beauty products, books, a camera, DVDs, electronics, gourmet food, health & personal care products, jewelry, kitchen & housewares, magazines, music, musical instruments, outdoor living products, computer products, sporting goods, tools and hardware, or toys online, please consider going through The Rugged Elegance World Marketplace.

Rugged Elegance is Tim and Jennifer's second venture together.

Upon graduating from Simmons College with a degree in business management, Jennifer helped put the biotech industry on the map. Ultimately, she created what became the leading biotechnology portal called BioSpace.com, Inc. (1985 - 2000). From 1995-2000, Tim joined Jennifer and grew the company to over 100 employees. In 2003, after raising $24 million in venture capital, they sold their interest back to the vcs who invested in their business. Today, BioSpace continues to serve over 1 million visitors a month and nearly every biotechnology and pharmaceutical company in the world. In addition, the original Biotech Bay map Jennifer produced in 1986 is on permanent display in the Smithsonian.

Six years ago, Tim and Jennifer went from promoting life sciences to life.

Jennifer's previous ventures are as eclectic as her personality and the stories she likes to write about today in RuggedElegantLiving.com.

Altruistically, Jennifer and Tim are building a business that will enable them to "give back," in part through Thrive Foundation for Youth and The Thrive House in San Francisco.

“The Rugged Elegance Inspiration Network”

“RE: San Francisco”

“Thrive Foundation for Youth”