Etsy Seller Interview with Irina of DaniqueJewelry

How DaniqueJewelry got started

Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?

The namesake and inspiration behind this shop come from my daughter, Danique, born in 2011. She is my third child, and while I was pregnant and raising my other two sons, I began my hobby of crafting jewelry for my friends and family. I started on my kitchen table with some beads and wire, working on projects when I came home from my "real" job and after I had put the boys to bed. Call it "prego  brain," but when Danique was born, her own inner sparkle inspired me to quit my day job and focus on what I really enjoyed: making family-style jewelry with quality stones and materials.

I launched "Danique Jewelry" on February 19th, 2012 on Etsy.com, and it's been a whirlwind of challenges and triumphs. Designs I thought would be popular flopped, and others I casually launched became best sellers. Through trial and error, I developed my own style and began to grow, and this year we’ll be celebrating 10 years of selling on Etsy!

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

My all-time favorite will always be our classic Danique Necklace! Named after and inspired by my daughter, it was one of my first and most popular designs. The thing I love most about this design is how personal these necklaces are to each customer. Broken down, each birthstone is paired with an engraved name tag to represent an individual, but all together, it creates a colorful cascade that’s unique to each family!

Two other favorites of mine are our Tiny Birthstone Bar Collection, which has a lot of great options for someone looking for more minimalist designs, and our Diamond Shape Rings, which are great for stacking and pair really well with our other rings!

Getting sales on Etsy

How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?

We received our first order within a few days of opening up shop. I feel very lucky to have a community of friends who were supportive of me when Danique Jewelry first started. They were some of my first customers and helped my business grow through word of mouth! This is still a part of how we attract new customers today; our current customers love the message and quality of our gifts and will often recommend us to their friends. We do some marketing through Facebook, Instagram, and Google, and we get a lot of returning customers too! We’re always trying to come up with new products and designs to keep our current customers coming back, and we have an email list to let them know when new products are going up on the store.

Managing DaniqueJewelry 

How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?

We’re currently a team of seven dedicated and hard-working women and artists. Each member of our team is capable of doing several different tasks around the studio, whether that be shipping and customer service, social media and online store maintenance, engraving, bezel setting, or jewelry assembly. Teamwork is definitely the backbone of Danique Jewelry! We handle most of our shipping through Etsy’s shop manager, Amazon’s seller central, and ShipStation. We also use DHL for some international orders. Our honorary 8th team member is our mailman, Jimmy, who works tirelessly year-round and comes by the studio at the end of each day to pick up packaged orders. We don’t know what we’d do without him!

The future of DaniqueJewelry  

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

Some of the goals I’m working towards at the moment are:

1. Create new jewelry designs to give my shop a bit of a refresh and create more items our returning customers can get excited about.
2. Figure out what marketing strategy works best for us and try out new ways to reach more potential customers.
3. Expand on the "gifts" part of Danique Jewelry & Gifts! I want to create more products that can be personalized and gifted and that aren’t necessarily jewelry but still align with the family-based core of the shop.

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

Jump right into things! Starting a business can be daunting, but the most difficult step is just getting started! There are a lot of things you’ll learn as you go, and you can always change things about your store in the future! When you’re creating new products for your store, there’s no such thing as a bad idea. I’ve been surprised by designs in the past that have gone on to become some of our best sellers! Some ideas will flop, but that will give you a better idea of what your customers want. Mistakes are always great learning opportunities! Most importantly, have passion for what you do! Running a business takes a lot of time and effort, but if you love what you do, it makes all the effort you put in feel so worth it!