Introduce your business and tell us your story: How did you decide on what to sell, and how did you source your products?
I trained as a jeweller and silversmith and saw a gap in the market between costume jewellery and fine jewellery. I wanted to create pieces that were beautifully made that would last a lifetime and beacon heirlooms, but still were adorable and not out of reach for most people, which fine jewellery very much is. Everything is made in-house in our workshop in Hatton Garden, London, the famous jewellery quarter where skilled craftsman have worked for hundreds of years.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Word of mouth, I had just set up the shop and sent the link to as many people as I knew! Great press drives our highest rate of sales. I have had my designs selected by HRH the duchess of Cambridge and has bought a few pieces. She has worn these pieces on numerous occasions and the press I received from this was phenomenal. It continues to spread our brand globally.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
Patchworks is great as it merges my courier UPS with Shopify wasting much less time copy and pasting information between the two dashboards and making everything more streamline. Amazing! Just started using the Quickbooks / Shopify app - seems good but I think it still needs a bit of development which we are working on together.
What are your top recommendations for new store owners?
Collect important data from right at the start, eg. email addresses. I also do a workshop a couple of times a year so that people can come and meet me as I don't have a shop, so I think it's important for customers to be able to see you face to face and interact as sometimes being behind an online store people forget you are a real person! I always add a handwritten thank you postcard to each parcel/order posted. I think again it's very important to keep it personal and remind people you care and you are not a robot. Anything to help them remember you!