0

Amy Peters Studio

a jewelry business success story

by Amy Peters.

Jewelry designer Amy Peters knows that dreams come true. Her designs are in over 600 stores, galleries, and catalogs. They’re worn by celebrities, seen on popular TV shows, and featured in magazines.

Her jewelry business, Amy Peters’ Studio, has rocketed to success since its humble beginnings in 1995 in a carriage house with a dirt floor and no running water.

Amy worked in a variety of non jewelry design jobs before taking the plunge and starting her jewelry business.

She credits these experiences with helping her build the skills and knowledge she would later draw on to turn Amy Peters’ Studio into a huge success.

Today Amy’s enormously popular jewelry designs center on expressive talismans and wearable keepsakes that are “affordable and accessible to everyone.”

Her pieces are inscribed with simple, profound messages and appealingly rustic images such as a spiral heart or Saturn with a star. Amy says, “A glance down at a symbolic ring or the touch of a necklace can often remind a person of the deeper importance of life.”

The fun, whimsical, inspiring jewelry from Amy Peters’ Studio appeals to people of all ages – including celebrities such as Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, and Courtney Cox Arquette.

Amy feels that the personal nature of her designs creates a connection between the artist and the wearer. “I feel so blessed to have touched so many lives through my designs,” she adds.

Her pieces have also caught the attention of national magazines, appearing in issues of Ornament, People, YM, Cosmo Girl, and others. And if you’ve watched “Survivor” or “The OC” on television, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Amy’s jewelry on some of the characters!

Interview with Amy Peters
by Rena Klingenberg

1) How did you first start selling your jewelry, and how did you evolve into your current sales venues?

I graduated with a degree in metal arts and jewelry design from San Francisco State University where I was able to create my own major.

After college I held different jobs, none of which were in jewelry design. I took up gardening as a hobby and decided I wanted to get a second degree in horticulture, so I moved down to San Luis Obispo.

I took a job at a local craft gallery, where I was around all kinds of beautiful handcrafted jewelry on a regular basis. One day in the gallery a prominent local artist was talking with me and he told me some advice that his professor had said while he was in college:

If you weren’t doing your art as a career five years after graduation, you weren’t ever going to.

It had been four and a half years since I had graduated, so took the leap. I rented a Victorian carriage shed with a dirt floor and no running water. I think the extra rent was $50 or $75.

I created a line of one of a kind jewelry, and showed it to the owner of Hands gallery where I was working at the time. They loved it and put my designs in a small case on consignment. They have been selling my work there ever since.

After that I had a friend who was working in Spirals gallery in my hometown of Palo Alto, and she set up an appointment for me to meet with the owner. I met with her and she took all of the jewelry that I had brought up there that day. I still remember how scared I was that day, walking into the gallery.

After that I hired a sales rep and started selling into galleries.

For years I only hand fabricated my designs. Stamping out one letter at a time and cutting out each design one at a time.

At a wholesale show one artist urged me to start casting my work, so I began looking for a casting company. Casting my work helped to get me out of production and really start to market and grow my business.

I had one holiday season in 1999 where I sold literally thousands of my designs to two different catalog companies, and it helped to fund my expansion. It enabled me to hire more employees and convert my entire line to a cast collection.

Now, I spend quite a bit of time focused on customer service. Keeping customers is more important than gaining new customers, since it costs five times as much to gain new customers as it does to keep the ones you have.

My designs are still sold in the first five galleries I ever sold to, so I take great care to work closely with the stores to make sure all of their needs are met.

2) What customer niches do you design jewelry for, and why did you choose them?

When I was a child my mother had art all around the house that had inspirational sayings on it. So I started creating jewelry with those messages when I was in college.

When I began my company I created a line for a Mother’s Day show, and that is where I grew my current designs from those beginnings. My work really appeals to a broad market of customers.

And I have created certain lines for different age groups. One of my most popular lines, the “Chunky Chokers,” appeals to the teen and college age groups, this is the collection that has been seen on TV in “Survivor” and “The OC”.

3) What retail price range has been most successful for your jewelry line? And do you ever offer pieces above or below that range?

My most successful lines have been between $30 and $40 retail. Those tend to be the magic numbers for my retailers – it makes a great price point for anyone looking for a unique gift or just a little spluge for themselves. I do have higher end lines that I sell into some stores.

4) What kinds of jewelry design decisions do you make when creating pieces for a national market?

I think about what I want to design and then I think about my current stores that carry my designs. And I talk with them about what they want to see expanded in my line.

I think about what has been selling, what hasn’t been selling. I take all of that into consideration usually. . . . But sometimes, I just design and add something to my line that I love and see if it sells.

5) Can you give us a brief idea of the process of producing an original jewelry design in large quantities, and getting it in 600+ stores, galleries and catalogs? And how long does that process take?

All of my original designs are created using traditional metalsmith techniques. Each design is cut out by hand, stamped if wording is on the piece, and then soldered together.

Then I send the designs to a casting company that makes a mold of the piece, so they are able to make multiples of each design and cast hundreds of them using the lost wax technique.

The original design generally takes from one to six hours, depending on the complexity of the design. Since it will be recreated hundreds or thousands of times I am quite particular about how my master designs look.

The casting process takes the casting company about three weeks, from wax creation to cleaning and finishing the pieces. Then the pieces come to our studio and we assemble and finish them by attaching chain or earwires to the designs.

And some of designs have a matte appearance, so we do that by hand.

6) What is the most challenging aspect of selling your jewelry via catalogs?

The large quantities needed to fill the orders. One of the catalogs that I have worked with for seven years, Femail Creations, has ordered quantities up to 1200 pieces at a time of certain designs. If I wasn’t ready for the large quantities and the cash out to create the designs, it could be very difficult to handle the volume.

I know quite a few jewelry designers who have tried to grow too quickly and it has been very difficult for them to keep up with the growth due to the cash flow issues. With most national catalog companies they expect terms of Net 30 or in some cases Net 60, which means you need to produce the items, send them to the catalog, and then wait 30 or 60 days to get paid.

So that means you need to have the cash available to purchase your supplies as much as 90 days before you are going to get paid for your work.

So I always warn newer jewelry designers to grow at a pace that is easy for you to manage the cash flow. Cash flow is only part of the concern with larger orders, also making sure that we have enough production staff to handle creating such large orders.

7) How do you get your jewelry nationally noticed – worn by celebrities, mentioned in fashion magazines, and seen on popular TV shows?

There have been several things that have helped to get my items noticed on a national level. I attend trade shows nationally on a regular basis. I advertise in trade magazines.

I have had my work featured in several high profile gift bags for celebrity events, including the SAG awards gift bag, an Oscars post-show gift bag, and many high profile nonprofit events gift bags.

I also send samples to celebrities and costume designers for television shows. When my designs were worn on “Survivor” it was just luck that we spotted it. Elisabeth (Filarski) Hasselbeck was given one of my designs by her parents as she left for the show.

I also send out a lot of press releases and samples to trade and fashion magazines.

8) What are the most challenging aspects of operating your jewelry business on a large scale?

The hardest thing about producing work and selling my designs on a larger scale is the inventory that I have to maintain, so I can ship to all of my accounts in a timely manner.

I often joke with my staff, that I would rather have a whole house of new furniture, than all of the jewelry parts that I have in stock.

I am only partially joking, and we have gotten much better about keeping a handle on how much of each item to keep in inventory, but it takes constant maintenance.

My production manager is constantly looking for better ways to keep less inventory on hand. Finding suppliers with lower minimums and quicker turnaround times are a big help.

9) What do you think has made your jewelry business so successful?

A lot of hard work. I will also pursue stores and catalogs that I think would be a good fit for my business – and I don’t give up after just one try.

If I really believe my work will be a perfect fit for a store I will continue to send catalogs, postcards and, in the case of national catalog companies, I will send samples on a regular basis. I also spend a lot of time on marketing.

10) How has your jewelry studio evolved from its beginnings in 1995 to now?

After I got married I moved my business out of the Victorian carriage shed and into the garage behind the house we were renting. After we bought our house, then we moved my studio into the house.

Then when I hired employees my husband and I purchased a building. A few years later we outgrew it (it was a very small building).

Now were are located in a small cottage-style building right next to a bike and walking path on the way to the ocean. We are located next to a small hotel, deli, and swim and tennis club. So we have just started to open retail hours during the week in a small retail showroom.

The studio is a wonderful location and setup for my business now. In the future we would love to purchase a building and open up a retail gallery.

11) Can you tell us a little about your open studio sales and events?

When we moved into our new studio space, we were asked to start selling retail, which is something that we had never done before, mainly because of size restrictions in our old building. So we are open five days a week – from 10 till 4 Monday through Friday.

We haven’t done any advertising yet, but have had quite a bit of traffic from a few articles that have been written about the storefront. In October the local art advisory group has a yearly open studio tour and I have arranged to be included on that list.

12) What is one thing you’ve experimented with in your business that you would NOT do again?

I spent about a year working with designs that were trend based. But as I created designs based on gemstones and colors that were hot at the time, I started to realize that I was not wanting to make “throw away” jewelry that’s only in for a season.

I want my designs to become part of the wearer’s lifetime wardrobe and be future heirlooms. So I went back to my roots and continued to expand my sterling collection.

13) What has been your most rewarding jewelry business moment so far?

About six years ago I was at a wholesale show. While I was out of my booth a friend was watching it, and a little girl came into the booth and asked for my autograph. When I returned I really thought my friend was pulling my leg when she described this girl and said she wanted my autograph.

Later in the day I saw a girl that looked exactly as described, so I approached her and her mother and introduced myself and asked them if they had stopped by my booth. It was them, so I asked them to stop by the next day.

It turned out that they had been purchasing my jewelry at a gallery I sell to in Seattle, Fireworks Gallery. The girl and all of her friends had been collecting my designs and she was thrilled to meet me.

I gave her a gift of a necklace and then she asked for my autograph. It was such a thrill for me.

14) If you were starting your jewelry business today, but with the experience you have now, what would you do to make it successful?

Honestly I don’t think I would do much differently. About the only difference I would have made is how I hired (and fired) employees.

In the past I have given too many chances to employees who really weren’t working out. One of which had started as a friend, so that was a big mistake – and now my policy is that I don’t hire friends, no matter what.

Over the years I have gotten a lot better at hiring and my core staff have been with me for awhile now. We work so closely as a group that I spend a lot of time working as a team, so any new people I hire have to be flexible and easy going.

15) Do you have any other advice for jewelry artists?

• Create a cohesive jewelry collection that speaks from your own artistic style, so when people see your designs they know that they are yours. Don’t copy another artist’s work, but create your own signature style. You don’t want to be known as “oh, her designs kinda look like So-and-So’s.” To get yourself noticed you need to do something that sets you apart from the crowd.
• Create personalized tags to put on your designs, but make sure instead of just a symbol you put your company name on the tag. I can’t count how many times I have asked someone wearing a beautiful handcrafted jewelry creation who made it. Most often they will say something like “oh, it was this great woman I met at an art show, can’t remember her name.” If I had been given the name maybe I would have become a customer. So don’t forget that your jewelry can continue to be a marketing vehicle for your company even after you sell it to a customer. I get emails almost weekly from people who have found my web site by complimenting someone wearing my designs, then the wearer flipped over the design and read “Amy Peters’ Studio” to them.
• Figure out a marketing plan. Read business and marketing books for ideas that can help you grow your business.
• Create a budget and stick to it.
• Make sure to keep up on your bookkeeping, so that at the end of the year you aren’t scrambling to pay your state sales tax and your income tax all at once. Pay quarterly if that is easier for you to do.
• Continue to review your Profit and Loss statements and make sure that you are making a decent profit from the sale of your designs. If not, look at how you can cut costs or whether you need to raise prices. Make sure to continually review this from year to year, so you’re keeping up with inflation.
• If you grow to the point of needing employees, don’t hire friends. It can work….but if it doesn’t, how would you handle it?
• Give your customers great customer service. It is much easier to keep an old customer than it is to find a new one.

Note from Rena:

Amy, thank you so much for treating us to this fascinating glimpse of a large-scale jewelry business.

Your tips on managing cash flow and inventory, caution in hiring friends, and tagging jewelry designs are especially valuable.

I’m inspired by the success of Amy Peters’ Studio – and by your example of making your dreams coming true.