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Hey Everyone!
Been a member / lurker for a couple years... these forums are pure gold if you take the time to read them and do your research. My fianceè and I have been dabbling in small eCommerce businesses on and off for the past few years, however we never "took the leap", until just recently.
Ever since the two of us met, all we ever wanted to do was start our own company. For financial purposes, we had both pursued day jobs... but as you can imagine, they were not very fulfilling. We knew we had to make a change in order for our dreams to become reality so we started saving all of our money... buying nothing more than we needed. Over the past 5 years of saving, we racked up a good amount of cash. The amount of money we saved would not be enough to cover leisurely expenses, but it would be enough to live... enough for us to purse our dreams and become an entrepreneur. We knew the journey was going to be difficult, but in the end very rewarding. Below is our journey.
My fianceè, Amber is a huge fan of women's jewelry and fashion. We did some market research on what was selling, and what wasn't and from there decided to jump right into it. We spent many nights coming up with designs and sketching them out. When we finally settled on our initial designs, it was time to find a manufacturer.
Since we were a startup, with very little capital, our initial plan was to have our jewelry manufactured overseas, in China. We found a manufacturer on Alibaba, sent our sketches over and within two weeks had samples sent out. To our disappointment, the products were not what we had expected... there were tons of QC issues and the pieces just did not fit our standards. Knowing very little about the jewlery manufacturing industry and the other resources available to us, we continued to try and make it work with this specific overseas manufacturer, but the lack of communication, understanding, and passion for our brand was just not there.
After conducting some further research, we decided we were going to bring back our manufacturing to the US. We located a great, highly reputable manufacturer who did everything in house and could do exactly what we were looking for. They took great interest in our brand, and even provided suggestions and recommendations based on industry best practices. As an added bonus, communicating with them was a breeze
The design process was pretty straight forward and well put together. Once we provided them with all of our designs and samples that we received from China, they converted them to CAD files. Once we approved the CAD files, they printed 3D wax models. Upon approving the wax models, they then sent us the completed plated sample for final approval. This streamlined process allowed us to develop products both efficiently and effectively.
As we all know, entrepreneurship involves a great amount of multi-tasking As our product was being being developed we always made sure we working on other things to help further the business along. During this time, we had all of our packaging needs ( boxes and drawstring bags ) customized with our logo. We also had befriended a developer a few years back- who was willing to take on our new eCommerce site- we sketched this design out and included all of the functionality we were looking for. We also took a ton of photography photos to implement on our website as well as incorporate on our social media accounts.
All in all, it took about 18 months to take our idea from conception to reality.... we officially launched our eCommerce website yesterday, and it's one of the best feelings in the world. Our goal is to eventually become a lifestyle brand that sells women's clothing, accessories, home goods, etc.
In addition to quitting our day jobs, we also made another big change as we moved from NJ to Austin, TX. We did a lot of research and found that the market for women's jewelry is incredible...there are a lot of fairs, shows, boutiques, etc. where we can sell our products. Quitting our "comfortable" jobs and leaving our home has been a bit scary and a huge risk for both of us, but we're confident in our product and we're going to work as many hours as it takes, learn as much as we can, and just hustle, hustle, hustle.
Sales are slowly coming in and we're exploring new avenues to market out product online. Here's what we're doing now / what we are working on implementing:
The website url is — www.bryananthonys.com - feedback is appreciated and please, be critical
On a side note - I really wanted to post our progress from conception up until this point, but unfortunately with our day jobs and spending all of our "free time" working to get the business up and running, I wasn't able to. With that said, our story begins here...
Been a member / lurker for a couple years... these forums are pure gold if you take the time to read them and do your research. My fianceè and I have been dabbling in small eCommerce businesses on and off for the past few years, however we never "took the leap", until just recently.
Ever since the two of us met, all we ever wanted to do was start our own company. For financial purposes, we had both pursued day jobs... but as you can imagine, they were not very fulfilling. We knew we had to make a change in order for our dreams to become reality so we started saving all of our money... buying nothing more than we needed. Over the past 5 years of saving, we racked up a good amount of cash. The amount of money we saved would not be enough to cover leisurely expenses, but it would be enough to live... enough for us to purse our dreams and become an entrepreneur. We knew the journey was going to be difficult, but in the end very rewarding. Below is our journey.
My fianceè, Amber is a huge fan of women's jewelry and fashion. We did some market research on what was selling, and what wasn't and from there decided to jump right into it. We spent many nights coming up with designs and sketching them out. When we finally settled on our initial designs, it was time to find a manufacturer.
Since we were a startup, with very little capital, our initial plan was to have our jewelry manufactured overseas, in China. We found a manufacturer on Alibaba, sent our sketches over and within two weeks had samples sent out. To our disappointment, the products were not what we had expected... there were tons of QC issues and the pieces just did not fit our standards. Knowing very little about the jewlery manufacturing industry and the other resources available to us, we continued to try and make it work with this specific overseas manufacturer, but the lack of communication, understanding, and passion for our brand was just not there.
After conducting some further research, we decided we were going to bring back our manufacturing to the US. We located a great, highly reputable manufacturer who did everything in house and could do exactly what we were looking for. They took great interest in our brand, and even provided suggestions and recommendations based on industry best practices. As an added bonus, communicating with them was a breeze
The design process was pretty straight forward and well put together. Once we provided them with all of our designs and samples that we received from China, they converted them to CAD files. Once we approved the CAD files, they printed 3D wax models. Upon approving the wax models, they then sent us the completed plated sample for final approval. This streamlined process allowed us to develop products both efficiently and effectively.
As we all know, entrepreneurship involves a great amount of multi-tasking
As our product was being being developed we always made sure we working on other things to help further the business along. During this time, we had all of our packaging needs ( boxes and drawstring bags ) customized with our logo. We also had befriended a developer a few years back- who was willing to take on our new eCommerce site- we sketched this design out and included all of the functionality we were looking for. We also took a ton of photography photos to implement on our website as well as incorporate on our social media accounts.All in all, it took about 18 months to take our idea from conception to reality.... we officially launched our eCommerce website yesterday, and it's one of the best feelings in the world. Our goal is to eventually become a lifestyle brand that sells women's clothing, accessories, home goods, etc.
In addition to quitting our day jobs, we also made another big change as we moved from NJ to Austin, TX. We did a lot of research and found that the market for women's jewelry is incredible...there are a lot of fairs, shows, boutiques, etc. where we can sell our products. Quitting our "comfortable" jobs and leaving our home has been a bit scary and a huge risk for both of us, but we're confident in our product and we're going to work as many hours as it takes, learn as much as we can, and just hustle, hustle, hustle.
Sales are slowly coming in and we're exploring new avenues to market out product online. Here's what we're doing now / what we are working on implementing:
- Facebook Advertising
- Google Adwords
- Reaching out to influencers on social media to promote our products (we think this is going to be a big one for us)
- We're looking into retargeting ads on Facebook
- Fairs, Popup shops, etc.
- Also plan on reaching out to some larger retailers to do trunk shows
The website url is — www.bryananthonys.com - feedback is appreciated and please, be critical
On a side note - I really wanted to post our progress from conception up until this point, but unfortunately with our day jobs and spending all of our "free time" working to get the business up and running, I wasn't able to. With that said, our story begins here...
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