Our Jewelry Brand Reached $9.2M In Sales And Went Viral On TikTok

Julien Plouffe

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Published: April 11th, 2022

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Julien Plouffe

Founder, Moonglow Jewelry

$500K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Moonglow Jewelry

moonglow.com

from Miami, Florida, USA

started May 2012

$500,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Julien recommends to grow your business!

Who Geoff Smart

Want more updates on Moonglow Jewelry? Check out these stories:

1. Growing An Online Jewelry Store To $6M/Year (2018) ➜

This is a follow up story for Moonglow Jewelry. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 6 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

I'm Julien Plouffe, originally from Montreal Canada but have been living in Miami for about 8 years.

Our flagship products are our necklaces that feature the picture of the moon from the date of your choice. We primarily sell to women aged 18-35.

Last year, we hit our best year yet with 9.2M in sales.

I started Moonglow Jewelry back in 2012 when I wanted to start leveraging my time and building a business.

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If you believe in it, go all in. I sold my first car for $16K to be able to pay for our next events to sell Moonglow in person.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

Last we spoke back in 2018, the business has been growing. When COVID first hit, things got a bit quiet then all of sudden, sales really spiked for us.

We always invest where we can, whether it be digital, print, events. We are always reinvesting into our business for long term growth.

We hired a photographer, a brand manager, and a communications specialist for SMS/email. We promoted our President of Ops to hold down the warehouse portion of things.

We do about 2-4 new product drops per year, we are always adjusting and pivoting with the trends while staying true to our artisan spirit and making designs with purpose.

We are pretty diversified on the digital marketing side of things with Facebook, Snap, Instagram and Tik Tok. Like a lot of people, Facebook ads have become more competitive with costs rising significantly since we last spoke.

Keeping customers returning is an important metric for us. The experience starts from the moment they first interact with your brand to the time they receive their package and start rocking their jewelry. We really care and caring is the first step, I often see people in it for the money only, they might get some success but it won't last because the passion needs to be there.

We recently got featured in Buzzfeed, made the INC 5000 list, Entrepreneur 40 under 40.

We recently saw some nice organic virality on Tik Tok with about 3 million views.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

Things go up, they go down, they go sideways, no day is ever the same. 2020 had started out like any regular year but then Covid happened and sales just spiked like crazy. I learned to order early, we had PO's out and shipments on the way, but our jewelry boxes, which are super important as every single piece we sell needs a box, had been massively delayed and we're stuck with no boxes.

We panicked a bit but we were able to scramble and find a temporary resolution. There's always a fix or a way out.

Personally, I've been staying fit and working out 4-5 times a week. Having a baby in December 2021. I will be spending a little time out in Utah to do some snowboarding

I learned to let team members know what their quarterly goals are, touch in weekly but don't try to micromanage, people hate being micromanaged. Just hire great people, trust and let them do their thing. You won't need to micromanage to know if it's not the right team member.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

Right now, we are going through a rebranding that will last the next 5-10 years. The company is quite different from when we started it 9 years ago. We are focused on content and designing amazing pieces.

Our mission is to light up the world with Moonglow and I'm stoked that we just crossed the 1M mark of 1 Million Moonglow moments.

We're growing in Europe and are planning to make a push in the UK in 2022.)

Have you read any good books in the last year?

I recently read Who by Geoff Smart and this book gave me some tips on hiring, what to look for, what to ask and how to find really good team members. I'm a big podcast guy, I also have a passion for real estate.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Keep trying something different if it's not working, change the branding, change the marketing, change the channel in which you're selling it, some products have success in stores more than online sometimes.

If you believe in it, go all in. I sold my first car for 16K to be able to pay for our next events to sell Moonglow in person. I was never worried, I just did what it takes to hit the goals we want to hit.