Giving Growth Jewelry

This week Kenya and I are starting to wrap things up. we sadly have not met our goal yet we have made around $200 which is minorly disappointing but in all reality, some money going to a great cause is better than none. I think our main struggle is how incredibly busy we both are and the amount of stress we are under so it is difficult for us to meet our deadline. I have learned how much I love making a difference and this learning experience has been amazing. After our time is up we would like to continue working on meeting our goal because we believe it is important to work towards making a difference in this world. I am super excited to see what we could do with this in the future.If we were to do it again I would have loved to have gotten to start earlier that way we would have had more class time.  The necklace I am wearing here is one of my favorite.   

As selling our jewelry as become very common at school now that we have gotten our name out there, we have started to consider other ways we can spread our name around and start selling in other places than just our school. Mrs. Jaynes gave me the great idea to look into getting a  booth at the Supermarkets that happen often at the Factory. We are going to look into that idea some more, but their might be come complications with our age and maybe even needing a permit to set up a booth, but we will be begin finding more information. Another idea is just starting to build and promote our Instagram more. We do have one, but we haven't taken a ton of photos of our jewelry, so we have to ty to get those first and just grow from there. The most simple way is just to ask those who have purchased jewelry to promote and just spread by ear. Just this weekend I went to go to one of my friends play, and her theater friend from a different school asked me if she could buy a choker, just from h...

This week was Winter break and I was away in California which made it difficult to work on our project. So instead this week I looked in shops for ideas on how other people sell their product and whether it is effective or not. Some of the things I came upon is hands-on marketing, what I mean by this is there was this cute little shop and you could take scraps of leather and make bracelets for a discounted price. I thought this was the coolest idea because it was a hands-on experience and it still made them money. I thought that maybe if our project went beyond class and this year we could implement this into our work. While I was away Kenya worked on making more product. I learned that we work well together but it is also hard when one of us is away. so far I think we are on track to our goal which is super encouraging.

As Emily and I are beginning to sell, we have taken into consideration what are mentor has told us, and have now already raised over $120. Emily's friends from Colorado are starting to also purchase some chokers, along with alot of fellow FRA students. We have also started to put the orders in personalized bags with notes on them for each person that buys one. Since we are starting to get a higher demand for our products a challenge we have faced is just time management with creating the chokers and bracelets. We both have very busy lives, and now that we are selling quickly, we have to carve time out of our days to create jewelry, which can sometimes take awhile. We have both decided to work on jewelry everyday Genius Hour we can and that why it will be able to create time to make as much jewelry as we can. Though we are getting more busy in our selling, it is very fun to see friends and students wearing jewelry you've worked very hard on. I am very excited the great improveme...

This week Kenya and I met with our mentor and it was extremely impactful. She helped us with any questions we had, it was very nice to be able to talk to someone with experience in what we are trying to accomplish. Some of the questions we asked her where: What would be the ideal pricing we should do for our products? What is the most effective way to ship our products? What audience should we target our products to? What is your most popular piece of jewelry? How should we openly advertise our jewelry  What company should we partner with for providing education in impoverished communities? She had very insightful and helpful responses to most of our questions. I think the major set back we had this week as I was not able to take good pictures till Sunday which set back our calendar a bit. What I learned about myself this week was I sometimes procrastinate which I need to work on. Another thing that we accomplished this week was selling mult...

Now that we have made it more public about our jewelry, we have begun to sell our products! I have received some feedback from my friends about what colors and styles they like and what they would like to purchase. It is excited for Emily and me to start seeing these great improvements. While Emily is in Mexico, she is hoping to get some really good photos to post on our Instagrams that will better sell our jewelry. I think we have found a solid mentor that will be able to guide us through this project. Her name is Elizabeth Adams and she is one of my mom's good college friends who lives in Alabama and has her own jewelry business called Exvoto Vintage Jewelry. She has a shop in Nashville as well, but will not be in town the times we need to do an interview. She isn't 100% a non-profit but she does give a portion of her money away to an organization that furthers cancer studies since her daughter passed away from cancer. We are excited to do a Skype call soon when Emily comes b...