How I Make up to $150,000 in Revenue a Year Selling Jewelry - Business Insider

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Original source: Business Insider
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Published: Aug 28th, 2022
How I Make up to $150,000 in Revenue a Year Selling Jewelry - Business Insider

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Alexa Allamano owns and operates Foamy Wader, a company focused on handcrafted jewelry.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alexa Allamano, a 38-year-old business owner from Whidbey Island, Washington.
Courtesy of Alexa Allamano In 2016 I moved my home up to Whidbey Island, and for about a year I was commuting from the island to the store in Seattle before I got pregnant with my son.
Courtesy of Alexa Allamano With the big windows, I had a lightbulb moment: What if I used them like a billboard that people could shop directly and buy online?
Courtesy of Alexa Allamano There will be people who are absolutely interested in your product and are dying to hear from you; those are the people you really connect with and grow with.

How I Make up to $150,000 in Revenue a Year Selling Jewelry - Business Insider

Alexa Allamano owns and operates Foamy Wader, a company focused on handcrafted jewelry. She started selling on Etsy in 2008 after getting laid off from her job at a bank. Here's how she navigates both brick-and-mortar and online sales, as told to Julie Peck. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alexa Allamano, a 38-year-old business owner from Whidbey Island, Washington. Insider has verified her business' revenue with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I opened up my jewelry shop, Foamy Wader, on Etsy in the fall of 2008 while I was working as an operations supervisor at a bank. It was a dry and boring role, and I needed a creative outlet. My brand's name is actually a nickname of mine — it came from going wading in a fountain that had been soap-bombed. A lot of jewelers on Etsy use their own name, but I didn't want the brand to be about me; I wanted it to be more about the ethos, the aesthetic, and how anyone can have a connection to the ocean. I made my first sale within a week without really understanding what was happening. I was refreshing the site to see what people had been looking at, and I got a notification that said something along the lines of "Now you've made a sale, you have to go ahead and ship it!" I wasn't even prepared to pack and ship an order — I didn't know how to do that. It happened a lot faster than I expected. In the winter of 2008, I was part of a big layoff at the bank. I lived on my unemployment and put all of my extra time into my jewelry business. I've been pursuing being a jeweler since then. I started doing craft fairs in late 2009 and exhibiting at a couple of holiday markets across the US just to get my brand out there That got me new wholesale contacts and allowed me to diversify my revenue streams. I use one credit card to buy all my materials for my business and the points for all of my travel, so I even went overseas to London twice for shows. At that time, I was reinvesting any money that I made from jewelry sales into the business. I was on unemployment for about two years and was still putting my résumé out there, trying to find a regular day job, but no one was hiring. Unemployment ended right when I was able to support myself with Foamy Wader. I was making around $40,000 a year just on Etsy, in addition to sales from wholesale and pop-up markets. In 2012, I grossed $104,000 in sales, and I opened a Shopify store in 2015. From that point on, my business was generally in the range of $150,000 per year in revenue — until the pandemic. In 2020, we finished with $63,000 in gross revenue; in 2021, that rebounded to close to $123,000. I've spent a very minimal amount on online advertising It's mostly been organic posting on social media and using search-engine optimization to make me friendly for ranking on Etsy's search. One of my best SEO tips is to create strong content pieces that support your customers through the buying journey and to link to that content on relevant product pages. For instance, I have a page dedicated to measuring ring size, converting international ring sizes, and choosing the best length options — and I link to that content on every appropriate product page. That content drives search traffic online while also assisting my direct traffic. I also recommend using an SEO tool to find the keywords your site ranks fourth through 20th for and target those with strong content, and utilizing your business page on Google Maps by putting your most important keywords in your business description and linking best-selling products. I read some time ago that you only really need 1,000 people who are true fans and are down for whatever you have to sell because they'll buy it themselves or as a gift or tell people about it. I knew if I had that number, I could put out an offer and conversions would come from that. So I started pretty early collecting my email list. I don't have a huge number of subscribers — around 3,500 — but I have a really active and loyal clientele. I have a 38% open rate on my email list, and I'm really proud of that metric. I also have the benefit of having gone and met them face-to-face at craft fairs. I don't put sales out publicly, so to ensure that people on my email list remain engaged and loyal, I do an inventory-reduction sale in April, and then my birthday is in November, so I always time my sitewide discount for customers to that. Because I'm an artist and I'm the face of the business, people are really connected with me. I'd been operating the business out of my home and reached the point that I absolutely needed more space In 2014 I opened a store in a less trafficked area of Seattle — a small retail area with a big studio in the back. My dad had a motorcycle-repair shop directly across the street from the building it was in, so it was this cool changing-of-the-guards thing to me since I grew up going to my dad's shop and seeing this building. We became a bit of a destination in the neighborhood. Allamano and her son. Courtesy of Alexa Allamano In 2016 I moved my home up to Whidbey Island, and for about a year I was commuting from the island to the store in Seattle before I got pregnant with my son. With a baby coming, I needed to simplify. In 2017 we opened our first location in Whidbey, when I was five months pregnant. We still see people from Seattle — they come to visit. The year that we opened the store in Seattle, it accounted for 5% of our overall revenue. When we moved to Whidbey, the percentage of business the store was doing doubled. It was pretty overwhelming at first because I was still running the business by myself. My husband is my business partner, but he's also a writer and works from home. I was able to hire help in 2018 — the first person I hired was a shop assistant who was a temporary summer hire to help with retail operations and jewelry production. Whidbey is kind of a tourist town, so by 2019 the percentage of revenue that the store accounted for jumped up to 60%. We were on a steady 25% year-over-year growth trajectory when the pandemic hit Our lease was up in the spring of 2020, and online sales took off, so we took the opportunity to close the store and went online only for about five months. In addition to the uncertainty over in-person shopping, our wholesale business had dried up, so we were able to make do with online sales only and got a PPP loan that made sure we were able to feed ourselves and keep the lights on. Then we ended up establishing a 200-foot storefront again just to have a home base for people to come to — a tiny spot with big windows across from a popular Whidbey Island restaurant. The window-shopping system. Courtesy of Alexa Allamano With the big windows, I had a lightbulb moment: What if I used them like a billboard that people could shop directly and buy online? So I put products in the windows with specific QR codes that linked to that product on my website. It took prompting people with a little sign in the window telling them to shop, but taking them to the exact page puts them three clicks closer to the purchase. We had our first window-shopping sale within a week of setting it up, and for a community that has a median age of around 57, we were thrilled to have it click with people. We've even put up a website with a downloadable guide for other retailers on how to do this kind of selling. Now we're established and open again in this tiny space I finally was able to hire more staff again in the fall of 2021 to be able to delegate more of the wholesale production and have the store be open every day. I now manage four employees. I also added my business to the Faire marketplace and am seeing new accounts come through there, too. With sales ramping back up, we needed more room to be able to expand this business beyond 200 square feet. A customer of mine sent me a direct message on Instagram and told me about a beautiful space facing the water that used to be a jewelry store, so that's going to be our new location. I was already on track to hit 20% to 30% over our highest-grossing year — $147,000 in 2015 — and now we're on track to do somewhere around $205,000 this year. The new Foamy Wader store location. Courtesy of Alexa Allamano There will be people who are absolutely interested in your product and are dying to hear from you; those are the people you really connect with and grow with. I know a lot of people who get really uptight when customers unsubscribe from their email list, but I'm like, "May you find something you're looking for. It wasn't me, and that's OK." I think my email campaigns are successful because when copywriting, I try to tell a story I imagine I'm writing to my ideal client as if I'm sending over a great product to a great friend that I think they would love, along with a quick update on business and life. My emails are text-focused and accented with just a few graphics. I make full use of the personalization or merge tags and close every email by acknowledging my customer, expressing my gratitude, and giving them a compliment or morale boost. We also do a lifetime guarantee on the jewelry that we make. We stand behind what's being made and offer free repairs. People really respond to that commitment to quality and quality assurance. I don't think I have an unhealthy level of workaholism, but I definitely would categorize myself as a workaholic — but I love what I do, so you can't call it work. When I first got started, I spent roughly 20 to 30 hours a week working on my business in addition to my full-time bank job. These days I work between 50 and 60 hours a week, roughly eight to nine hours a day. Two or three days a week I operate the storefront while we're continuing to hire, and the remaining days I work from home, working in 1 1/2- to three-hour chunks sandwiched between chores and parenting. Do you have a successful Shopify store and want to share your story? Email Lauryn Haas at lhaas@insider.com.
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