EP345 How ONE Geeky Maker Doubled Her Business to $265K by Doing Less

11:44PM Mar 21, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Stephenie Denault

Keywords:

business

year

people

jewelry

stephanie

ring

money

selling

momentum

jeweler

etsy

quebec

grow

ended

sales

stones

pandemic

website

find

comic con

Be realistic about your abilities. One of the things to say if you find you're good at one thing, but not good another, take a little bit extra money and get some hired help.

Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product-based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? Alright, let's do this. Welcome to the Thrive by Design Podcast. This is Tracy Matthews, the host of the show today and I am very excited to have a special guest who has done some really incredible things as a solo jewelry business owner. Her name is Stephenie Denault. She is owns a company called Le dragon or Dante and that's my best French are love dragon are jaunt if you are here in the US. And she's going to be sharing her journey, and how she was able to grow significantly throughout the pandemic, and ended 2021. With her best year ever, she almost doubled her previous year's sales and close the year out with about $265,000 in revenue. And what's incredible is that what Stephanie did is she really learned and discovered how to lean in to best sellers, she discovered how to pay herself first by using a special system that we're going to talk about, she learned how to really increase your average order value, and how all these things impactful together. And really dialing in on her niche audience for who her dream clients and niche audience were, that allowed her to expand and grow. And it's a really inspiring story. She's also going to talk about how she's stepped into her role as chief visionary officer using some of the tools that we teach in our momentum program, and so much more. I think you're gonna be really fascinated by this story, especially because Stephanie is very similar to a lot of artists out there, she has ADHD, she also is dyslexic. Not that all artists are that way. But I mentioning this because, you know, I really resonated with some of the things that she was saying she had family members who didn't really support her, and thought that she was making a mistake by going in and training as a jeweler and also starting her own business, and so much more. And she's going to share with you how she overcame some of those things and leaned into what she was naturally gifted at to overcome some of the challenges that she faced as an entrepreneur. And so before I introduce Stephanie, I just like to share with you she's going to be sharing a little bit more about our momentum program and the growth that she experienced, she more than doubled her six figure sales in the program last year. And I'm just so so proud of her and everything that she's done. And we are open for enrollment for our momentum program right now. And I wanted to mention this because Stephanie also mentions how powerful the retreats are in the momentum program, and our next spring retreat is coming up at the end of April. And so if you've been considering joining this program, or you're looking for coaching or mentorship, and you really want to lean into some of the tools that are going to help you scale, and maybe double your sales or triple your sales this year, then here's your official invite. If you'd like to learn more head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash momentum, you can fill out your application right there. And if you're approved, we will get you on a call with Natasha who will talk a little bit more about your situation. So we're really looking forward to this and I'm looking forward to learning more about you. So let's dive in to today's episode. Stephanie is the founder of Lucia Gong, RS en de jewelry company in Quebec. Montreal, Canada, I have I

I'm laughing at myself right now. 70 I'm not laughing at you. Because that's my best French and I'm just playing around with it anyway. Let me do a quick bio intro Stephanie. She's been a jeweler since 1998 and independent since 2010. She loves being a nerd and a geek and so she sells all of her jewelry at Geek conventions and online on our website and on Etsy. She is a slave to her own passion as she says she's an artist and jeweler who is a gamer and into anime sci fi and a general all around geek who loves going to conventions. Way before she started selling at them. She creates precious metal geekery for people like herself were alerted to zinc, nickel and cadmium which is what most of the jewelry At the conventions that she attends are made up. And so she wanted to create something for people like her who wanted nicer pieces of jewelry that they could wear and sell, but also really display their geekery. So let's dive in to this episode with Stephanie. Well, I am really excited to have Stephanie, the note on this show, to talk a little bit about some fun things that have happened to her over the last year in her business. So Stephanie, welcome to the program.

Have to have be here.

I'm trying to get my best French accent on it's not totally working. But you're back. Yeah, I was just on an interview with someone else from Quebec. And I can't even say how do you say it in French? Quebec? Quebec, Quebec. Okay. Yeah. All right. So I'm excited to have you because you had a great year last year, you said that it was one of the first years that you pay yourself the full time salary that you really wanted to make. So I want to really dive deep into that and some of the things that you've done, and to just talk about how your business has evolved and changed and grown over the last couple of years. So tell me a little bit about your journey into the jewelry industry.

Oh, well, that one is kind of fun. Um, I was working as a jeweler, while I was in fine arts before I became a jeweler. And what happened was, is that I was I put this I was a fine artist students before. But what happened was I joined the program in fine arts and discovered it couldn't stand the egos of the classmates I was with, I have a fragile ego. So I discovered by fluke, one of my roommates I was living with was taking a trade school program and jewelry making to get an extra 100 bucks a month as welfare check that after 15 minutes to get fed up and just throw the projects come through, but I can't do this anymore. This is too hard. I look away you assume like, hold on a second. I can do this. So I enrolled two years full time. I was living off of 7500 a month a year to get through school because it was our first race. Yeah. Being add and going. I had a choice either working or going to school. I couldn't do both at the same time. Yep. finish school, went to working for a couple of different shops. I worked two years at Hennis jewelers production shop, he tennis bracelets and other gold jewelry. I worked a couple years in repair shops, and I had worked six years as the system manager and technician at a retail store. I ended up leaving that job for health reasons. And during this entire time, I'd accumulated my workshop equipment, started making some stock on hand and like doing a little bit shows like once or twice a year. So my partner Steven said, Well, now that you've gotten full time, like you have time to think about it, why not give it a shot working at this full time. At the beginning, I was doing craft shows I was doing juried events, church fairs, whatever. And I got approached by the owner of when the owners of Comic Con in Montreal asked Well, do you have to have a table here? So you got me into Comic Con and it changed my whole direction of my clientele. I'd before I was doing a lot of selling to pretty much anyone. And you're always talking about focusing on your dream client, which is what I ended up doing. And realize there's a huge market for people like myself who are allergic to cheap metal jewelry. Myself, I'm allergic to zinc, nickel and cadmium.

Oh, everything. Yeah, mix stuff and everything

that you'll find a Comic Con all the really cool stuff I can't wear I'll break on hives. So I started making stuff for myself, and then eventually moved on to making stuff for other people.

Yep.

At the same time, I'm still selling making stock from I have some model designs from the 50s from a jewelry store that closed down back in 98. Celtic classic 1950s, signet ring, stuff like that. But I focus more on the geeky stuff. I ended up the big the big thing were happening over the last little while was I do a lot of custom jewelry for cosplayers. Which are people who dress up as character and go to Comic Con. Yes. And it there's it's very specialized market. But for people like myself who have a hard time finding these Trains have sort of items, it's very fulfilling to say, I made something for someone that can wear all the time. Because my, my theory is, is that making geeky jewelry that you show off your fandom without having to take it off just for the show you can wear all the time 24/7

That's so cool, because that's a very specific niche Comic Con cosplayers or people who really like, you know, fantasy and like all the things that are involved in that genre. So when you kind of like realize that this was your niche, like, what, what are some of the things that you did to kind of lean into that?

Oh, I did this, I was trying to pretty much tap into the type of fandoms I like, I'm UCLA. I grew up watching MacGyver, Star Trek generation, a lot of geeky stuff. Anime went back from the 80s and I've been going to conventions since the early mid to late 90s. I've been going to Comic Cons anime conventions, and I knew the fandom already. So it was pretty easy to meet people who were looking for something custom. My first custom piece was a comic book artist from Montreal that was looking for a custom Green Lantern ring. And the guy weighs about 120 pounds soaking wet. And all the all the stuff he would find are large, bulky rings. Yep, he goes, I would just want a nice signet ring like Sure. So did one measurement for him and that it's been like that ever since.

We got a cat in background.

What's your Max?

Max? We have Max in the band.

Yeah, Mr. Chat chatterbox. If anyone has a ginger, they know exactly what I'm talking about. My most recent success was a ring base off the enemy house Moving Castle. I decided about five years ago for cosplayer in Atlantic City. And I've been selling for a while. And I'd say October of 2020 I started getting popular. And it just kept ramping up. I went from selling one maybe two a month to selling 20 to 30 a week. Wow. And it's Yeah, because no one else was making precious metal with the options I give because I do with I love gemstones. I'm a rock hound first and foremost. And I would give people options for different stones not just for stones, or just the standard colors I would give people someone wants a Tanzanite you can have a Tanzanite if you want a sapphire, you can have a sapphire and giving people the options different sizes. I because I ranged anywhere from a two to a 16. And people are often finding that they don't have those options when they're buying rings. And it gave me a larger niche. And the reason why my rings became so popular is I had a couple of customers apparently were reviewing my stuff on tick tock. Oh really? Yeah. At tick tock was the reason I went viral.

That's so great.

I didn't know about it. I couldn't figure out why the ring start going popular and thinking okay, maybe there's a resurgence of interest in this older, older anime but great cool. And customer says Oh, no, no, my daughter saw your video about this ring on tick tock. Okay. Good to know. So it was it was interesting because I beginning of the pandemic, I was so worried about keeping the business going because about 35 40% of my income was tradeshows and with the pandemic no shows, so it was a little worried my okays my business couldn't survive. And with the sale this ring it's at didn't just save my business actually propelled it forward, fast forward and allowed me to expand. I was able to start hiring out. I have my caster also does wax pulling for me. It said me doing my home. Yes, because I pretty much did everything except for casting originally. But with business growing I needed to actually be able to focus on her things like is you're always saying it's important to work on the business instead. In the business, so it's, it's a big deal. So I ended up hiring a VA at the end of last year. She's helping out my social media stuff because I suck at social media posting blogs. I have a DD and I'm dyslexic. So writing papers and blogs is like pulling teeth. Yeah, it's just enjoyable. Well, what I also did is I started the game at the game pandemic, I decided to take the week because you've been pushing in the flourish and thrive Academy for years, you should always get off Etsy and get your website going. So I finally gave myself time to do it. And got my website up. It's not exactly how I want to look, but I'm getting it's getting there. And but most of my revenue is still coming from Etsy. The hardest part with Etsy is the fees, because now the fees are much higher. It's averaging between 10 to 20%. My sales as of April 1.

Are you taking actions to move people to your website and build your email list?

Yeah, in the spring retreat, we were talking about incentives to customers to get them to move off at sea to come to you. So one suggestions I had received was gift cards. So I made a whole series of gift cards to include with my packaging, with a gift code that like Kumbaya, my shop 15 bucks off your next order, and it has helped a bit. Most recently, what they did is on my business cards, which I included all my packaging, I actually has my social media links on the back of the business card. Yes. So people can find me on my social media. And all my social media profile is my website. Like, there you go. You go there, you can buy directly from my website. And a customer who was looking at when my haul rings, and she was looking for pictures while I was at Disney. And I told her well, I can't provide you any pictures right now. But go check on my website, I have to listing with all the different photos because Etsy only has a limit of 10 photos per listing. Whereas Shopify you have you can play as many as you want. Exactly. She went in there, and instead of buying the $150 birthstone ring she went to buy, she bought a $200 ring with a sangha, orange Sangha Sapphire.

Wow. Yeah, no, you had like many more options to be able to sell higher price point items, which is awesome. Oh,

absolutely. Because is there certain items I don't sell on Etsy, just because they're higher price points.

Yeah, you design custom work. And then you do that you work with people to design something in their vision. But then you also turn that into, like a production like piece so that you can make it over and over again, is that what I'm getting here? Okay,

yeah, I do limited productions. I can't say limb to run. But most of my stuff I make I make to order. So I don't do a lot of ready stock items, except for the stock I take with me to shows and events. Because people have are usually looking for rings with stones with different sizes. And because the sizes are never the same. I'll have weeks where I'll get mostly sizes six to seven, and then have another week, which will have at range between a 10 to 13. So you never know what size people want. So I find it easier to make on demand for people in the size they want with the capacity and stones. Instead of trying to stock every single size with every single stone. That's a lot of wasted money.

And how is current your inventory control?

Very well. It means that I don't have a lot of raw material inventory sitting on hand except for gemstones. Most of my gemstones I buy on eBay, and bulk lots anywhere between 20 to 50 stones at a time. So that's allowed me to help control my inventory, depending on how many stones i i need. Like I'll order as required. In the case of the silver because right now silver is very expensive. Yes. I don't know about the US but here in Canada, it's averaging about 4045 bucks an ounce. Yeah. So

fame just like US monetary you know? Yeah.

Well, because of that I don't want to tie up all my money in raw material if I don't have to. So Move. Not everyone could do that, like some people like, I have a longer processing time a processing times about a week to two weeks depending on the items. But I find my customers always are willing to wait for it.

Well, they're probably willing to wait because you do such a specialized product too. It's not something that everyone's doing. And you know, it's in a very specific niche. And that's allowed you to grow. So one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show today is because you did have significant growth. And, you know, we're I don't know how things are in Quebec, but where I am in the United States, everything's open, but things are starting to open up. And it has been open for a while, but things are starting to open up in some of the other areas of the country. And so how have you grown during this time, when you know, a lot of your business was really coming from in person sales? Like what are some of the things that you've done to like, really help expand because you had a significant growth last year?

Yes. Well, what I've done is that I did something that I hadn't done, and I should have done before, but just had like, the time is focused on time and energy into working on my business. I oftentimes is like, I'll take care of this later. I'll take care of this later. It's easy to add. Yeah. And what I decided was finally, you know, I'm going to focus on the business, I'm actually going to invest the time and energy to grow it to actually set the websites. So I took a course with Shell Easter to create my Shopify site. I started focusing more on the laying the foundation course. And then at the end of 2020, I decided to join momentum. And I had a one on one with clay at the end of the first quarter of 2021, and she really pushed me to give all my working on my pricing, working on reevaluating how I price my stuff, raising the average order value, I was really hesitant at add to the like the rings that I'm selling now, they're all most of the stuff I sell is in silver, by selling bronze, stainless steel and gold. And I was underpricing myself, I wasn't doing a pricing formula and charging enough to make it so I was having a higher higher order value and a higher profit margin. So I ended up raising my prices by about on the average about 20 25% depending on the item. The rings that have gone viral, they went from the Burstow silver and birthstones from $125 to $150. Wow. And I was a little hesitant because I was afraid, okay, I'm gonna lose all these customers. Now. I can't I still can't keep them stuck.

It's so crazy. If this was raising your prices didn't do anything. Yeah, well, it's making more money.

Yes. Well, the making more money actually helped a lot because I had been one of those people that also was I was not paying myself. I was putting money into paying the house bills and whatnot. But most of the money would just end up being squirreled away, it's back to the business. The Profit First system, from the book you had mentioned about two, three years ago, I read up on it and like, okay, the pot system seems to make a lot of sense. So what they did is I created the pots, the pots for me, I have a deposit account, and the money that was deposited into my account, I would take 30% from my pay, I would put 20% for the taxes because our taxes are higher than the US. And 5% for profit savings to pay for large equipment if I had to upgrade some tools, and the rest would stay in the operating costs and would stick to the budget of the operating costs. And it was a struggle I started off. It's our end of August of 2020. And for the entire 2021 I paid myself and made enough money to be able to post squirrel away and pay for my vacation to Disney.

That's awesome.

It's the first time I didn't have to borrow money to go on vacation.

Wow, that's like awesome. Like really plan this. You're like I'm doing this and I'm gonna like save and like think about like a business owner and

part of why I became a business owner is I want to prove people wrong. I grew up with people assuming I was getting them out too much in life. I was gonna be one of those people that they expect. Because I was dyslexic, this an ADD, they assumed I was lazy, was not putting effort into anything. And they had assumed I was not going to do much my life be on welfare had a bunch of kids. And that was it. That's all. I'm one of those people like, I'm going to prove you wrong. So I was the first person I found to actually really open my own business. And I bought a hat, we bought a house, we got, we were able to fund a lot of the money for my own business. And it's just been amazing. I'm like someone who is not supposed to do anything with their life, I'm able to say I am a business owner.

You're making successful your app right now. I'm serious, like, this makes me so happy for you. Because, like, um, first of all, I'm really sorry that you didn't have that support behind you. Because that's really hard. If people just make assumptions about you, and you're just like, I'm going to prove you wrong.

Well, like when I will in loans, and bursaries to go through jewelry school. Like, as I said, 7500 a year. Most it was a government funded a trade school. So like, it cost me $140 a year to go to school. And the rest was living expenses. And my stepmother was like, You're gonna go into debt to learn how to be beaded necklaces? I'm like, No, I'm going to go into debt to learn how to make your wedding ring.

Yep, exactly.

So several years later, she was bragging about how her daughter's a jeweler, and like how amazing she is. And I'm like, wow, those are different tunes.

I know. Exactly. You've shown some success and all those things. Oh, my gosh, I wish I bet she's proud of you.

Well, I wish she unfortunately died in July 2020. from cancer. But I would have loved to seen her reaction to how lat the how it was at the end of last year, like how things had gone. Both my mom and my dad are super proud of me. My dad likes to talk about his successful daughter, like how she's managed to like, despite everything is make it making a name for herself.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, you know, I can see how they would be must be so proud. Or you're I mean, I'm sure mom's looking down on you. And just thinking how proud she is of you, too, you know? Yeah. Which is great. So let's talk about how your business grew last year, like, what happened? Like, how are the sales like what's going on?

Well, most of my sales for last year, because usually, like you see, like January, February, March, you have a slump after Christmas, yet that low, low period. It didn't slow down. If anything, I made more money each month than they did in December of 2020. And about 90% of those sales, were that one ring design.

That's great. So you found a best seller, and it just kept going.

Yep. But at the same time, I also tried to keep my feet on ground and realize this is not going to continue forever. Yes, slam things out for when the momentum slows down. So I didn't stop creating new, like new designs promoting new stuff. And as much as this ring is very popular, I want to make sure that this there was something solid base to keep going. I want to make sure that if the popular this ring, something stopped that I was still making money. Luckily enough, because of my niche, I'm always selling stuff in the geeky field.

What did you end 2021 in sales? Like how would your sales end?

Much to my surprise at the end of 2020? I ended the year about 130k. Canadian, which was the same as I had done the previous year, which shows

at the during the pandemic when all the things were shut down.

Yeah, I was. I was really shocked at the end of 2021. I ended the year at 268k.

Oh my gosh. Wow. Over doubled.

Yes, yes. I'm like using a lot of way worth momentum and laying the foundation. I use a lot of that info to help bring my average order value up. And to kind of work at pulling my customers away from Etsy into my Shopify site.

Well, there's some ways that you know, we're going to talk a little bit more about that in the retreat too because I feel like there There's a lot of opportunity to continue to grow your website audience and also optimize it for. For some of these, like more niche, people looking for Comic Con jewelry, etc, or fantasy jewelry, whatever it is, you're probably getting traffic from people who want fantasy football rings. But

one of the things I found is that when the big things you always keep saying is that focus on your dream client don't try and sell to everybody. And one of the biggest things I did was really focused on. Okay, I have all these other collections I sell. But I'm going to focus more my energy on my geeky collection. And it's one of those things that has helped my business a great deal because my, my clientele is of all age groups, all business types, like you get everything from someone got work, someone works as a mechanic to a CEO of a company to like, like these tech, techno business people. And they all converge at Comic Con. Yeah,

I know. It's so cool, right?

The other thing we expanded on is the guy does my production work also does 3d modeling.

Oh, so he's been able to help you with cat.

Yeah, so what he's been doing is, uh, he does 3d model designs. We started off with originally, just a standard 3d printer to render the designs and events the point that he was able to buy a resin printer. Oh, wow. And you were able to find a resin to print that we can actually use the milk, face rubber molds and be able to mold the design or the model directly into the rubber and pull the waxes out after. Great.

I want to bring this back to just a couple of things and ask you a few specific questions like, what were some of your favorite the favorite things that by joining momentum, like what was the most helpful for you to kind of get to the result that you desired.

Honestly, the biggest thing that for momentum for me was having community. Having community of other jewelers who were in the same boat I was and lacking the competitive attitude like the people who are like, I'm not sharing my secrets, because these are my proprietary secrets. The info was very open. The same thing with the coaching program is it's so nice to have you open atmosphere to share this information and help you along and people are happy to help you get successful.

I love that. What piece of advice would you give to another designer who is trying to grow from 130 to 250 or 265 a year in revenue.

Streamline your focus on your clientele focus on a small range of products. If you don't try to do several different designs unless you're falling to the same collection. Second, be realistic about your abilities. One of the things is that if you find you're good at one thing, but knocker another, take a little bit extra money, get the higher help. The other thing I would suggest is don't give up. When things get tough, great advice. A lot of people give up. Don't you can do it. Just keep going and don't let anyone tell you that. You can't do something because of A B and C.

I mean, we spoke about this earlier with like your challenges with your family and like look at where you are now. Which is amazing. That's awesome. Stephanie, I want to thank you for being here today. Where can we find you?

You can find me on my website Luke vago ashanti.com You can also find me on Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Look up Ludovico Ashanti you should be able to find

their Satan in American English

Literature at the dragon dragon or gente it's it's hard to see not saying French

aren't joking with you because I'm like cuz obviously it's spelled out I'm just like I'm not gonna

it's it's it's funny. Is that the name of my business because I wanted to go for the gold dragon. Originally, that the name was already spoken for when I register my business, so when I was registering here in Quebec, you have to register your name in French and in English. So like okay, the silver dragon that I go on a show and the guy read Nickelback when deserting us can make a suggestion. Sure. The day well, as you can see with the X at the end of sexy,

very sexy, great work.

Well, everyone go find Stephanie, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. I hope that you are

inspired by Stephanie's story, make sure that you go say hi on her on all the social media channels. And if you are interested in getting results like hers, I would love for you to fill in your application for our momentum program. Our spring retreat is coming up. It's one of the highlights of the year and you definitely don't want to miss it. You can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash momentum, fill in your application right there and then booking a call with Natasha, thank you so much for listening to the show today. I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, this is Tracy Matthews, signing off. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help 1000s of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to thrive by design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive.