We are a contemporary sculptural jewelry company based in Pondicherry & Pune, India.
After spending decades in luxury design in New York and Delhi, I decided to start this line. Our jewelry collection of bracelets and neckpieces personifies what we like to think of as “Everyday Wearable Art’ - Pieces that are timeless, old, unique and sculptural.
Inspired by natural textures, Anthropological stories and monumental Art, our jewelry is strong/urban yet warm and personal.
I love our design process in which each design begins as a clay sculpture that is then individually cast in aluminum and brass using the low impact sand casting technique.
We retain and celebrate the indelible mark of the craftsmen that is very evident in the slight variation in every piece. We hope this styling and non traditional approach to jewelry making will ultimately help us expand this new visual Identity for contemporary Indian jewelry design.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Once our website was completed and launched (thanks to the ease of set-up from Shopify) we started a huge outreach to our friends, family and ex-colleagues. The first order actually came from an old friend who had bought from me earlier as a budding designer.
We now market across social channels, email lists, blogs and digital publications.
So far, we've seen blog and publications drive the maximum referral traffic to us and convert to sales.
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?
We selected Shopify to build our store to leverage the great themes they offered along with one of the best user interfaces's we've seen. As a non-tech person, that becomes critical at a later stage when things get busy.
We use 8 paid apps which enhance store features like image zoom, sharing instagram submissions on the product page, invoice and label generation, submission to search engines, currency conversion, physical store locators, selling on Facebook etc. We also manage all our accounting online and use an app to push orders from Shopify to Quickbooks.
All shipping and logistics is currently in house and we are looking to integrate that soon with a shipper and connect to out store as well.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
Take time and research the features a great web store should offer. Only then should you start building your store and avoid any mid way changes. Take advantage of the great apps already on the App store to avoid complicated custom coding.
Use high quality images and select the font carefully. It makes a big impression
Last but not least, read the Shopify blogs and forum articles extensively for tips and ideas to market your shop well.