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Start a Jewelry Business and Fail

Lea Chen
Sep 11, 2018
3 min read

You have to make a few mistakes in life to learn the tools to succeed.

And a quick mistake this was indeed. The name of the game is "NuMade Jewelry."

Inspiration

After about a year and half of running my graphic clothing brand, Lovelea, I was home for the summer and killing time with my sister, Mia, who was 11 at the time. She's the most crafty person I've ever met on this Earth, so naturally, the project this time was DIY-ing our own necklaces. And for sure because I had the car, we took full advantage of it and drove to the hottest spot in town... Joann's Craft Store.

Being sisterly cute and all, we decided to make matching necklaces with our initials engraved. She had received a necklace stamping kit for her birthday a while back and used those tools to stamp our newly purchased dog tag (so I don't think that's the term...but you know what I'm referring to...hopefully).

L...and M. Bam, stamped on for eternity. The process made me feel like a blacksmith from the 1400s but a trendy one nonetheless.

Then another bam came to me - I saw a lot of customized necklaces around Instagram and Etsy around that time, so naturally thought we could build our own store of customized necklaces.

I'm convinced this "turn what I'm doing that's kind of effective into a business" mentality was implanted within me from birth. When I was young, I bought this American Girls book called "How to Start a Business" and I don't remember much except the cover was green, had a yellow coin on it and it inspired my best friend and I to do a yard sale where we yelled at the 5 cars who passed by the suburban street.

Execution

Even though looking back on this now I question why I moved so quickly, the excitement and sheer work power I felt when starting this was at peak productivity level. It felt particularly special to work on something with my little sister, integrating her love for crafts with my business passion.

When thinking of a name for our lil company, we went back and forth, wanting to capture the handmade aspect of the necklaces while keeping it personal to us. So the "made" half was easy. We ended up with "nu" as an acronym for necklace for you! Hah, were we adorable young people or what?

my cutie of a sister in our "NuShine" product (aka the necklace and a pearl)

Within days, I had prototypes created, a website (a quite snazzy one) up and business cards ordered (250 because I can't say no to a good Vistaprint deal).

Like I tried to take this artsy photograph with the back blurred. It felt real. And we moved at a million miles per hour, with social media posts up and running as well.

But then a few days pass and it hits you. Just because I like this idea... it doesn't guarantee anyone else actually wants to buy it. But like... I hoped... I was so wrapped up around the creation of my products that it kept me from properly assessing step 1, "is this idea in demand?"

Naive me thought yes because Etsy has custom necklaces and mine are cheap!!! But Etsy has hundreds of custom jewelry makers and in this industry, cheap ain't necessarily a good thing.

The worst memory of it was after I had created the website and spammed like dozens of Facebook friends, many who I had never really talked to, with a request to check out my NuMade website. Months after I closed down the website, I met up with one of the people I had initially messaged - "yeah, it was kind of weird when you messaged me about your necklace company but hadn't talked to me for months."

And from that moment on, I vowed to never use people solely as marketing channels... and also never to be an insensitive human being.

I failed Startup 101, not that I'm credible to teach that course, but I can definitely at least give myself a grade.