Scaling My Online Jewelry Store In 2023 And Beyond [Update]
This is a follow up story for Vivalatina Jewelry. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hello again, I am Nicolas Tranchant, I am French and I left France in 2012 to follow my Mexican wife going to live back in Mexico. There, I set up my online jewelry business, in July 2012: Vivalatina which focuses on the French market, and later on, in 2018, I launched another online jewelry boutique Vivalatina Shop focused on the US market.
You can find all the details about starting my business on StarterStory.
We make and sell our jewelry collections and we are specialized in custom jewelry making, so we do not have any flagship product, what we market is our ability to make beautiful, creative, or complex jewelry projects.
Since 2020, our growth has been quite slow as shown by this graphic showing our revenue since 2013.
In 2020, we were generating 139,000 Euros in revenue, and in 2022, we generated 156,000 Euros. As we sell in Euros in Europe and USD in the USA, everything has been converted into Euros.
Start with a goal for the year and a detailed plan of action of what to do each month to reach that goal. Track the results, successes, and failures and improve semester after semester.
While our growth has been slow since 2020, these have been complicated years for everyone and we were able to embrace new markets with good perspectives.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
Since 2020, our sales have grown by 12% only, but as the exchange rate between Euros and Mexican pesos has changed, my business has turned less profitable than before. Back then in 2020, the exchange rate was around 24 pesos for 1 Euro, and now it is 20 pesos for one Euro.
The good news is that we were able to grow while the economic situation in France has been complicated during the last 2 years and we were able to attend to 274 clients in 2022, which represents a growth of +31% compared to 2020.
Another good news is that our revenue in the Trailing 12 months was 185 000 euros on April 30th and our sales in the US have grown 475% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022.
As a reminder, we were selling up to now 95% in France and were very exposed to economic problems in France. Our goal is to balance our revenue between Euros and USD, so our online marketing is now focused on growing our US online boutique.
To improve our sales, I have been working during 2022 on creating 580 new product keywords for which our online boutiques had a good chance to be visible. Also, I had to make audit and clean our US online boutique to make it more efficient for SEO purposes.
The big changes in 2023 are these ones:
- I hired an assistant on March 1st, 2023. After hiring and switching with various assistants that were not up to the task, it seems I have finally found the right one. This saves me time, trouble and gives me more time to manage my marketing efforts
- I have launched a new jewelry niche collection focused on pure gold that has already given very good results. This proves that a very focused marketing strategy can give results very quickly. This has been my best marketing success up to now.
- I will be translating our boutique in Spanish to start selling in Mexico in June 2023. I had two major clients in Mexico in the last 6 months and this has shown me I was blind to a potential market.
- I have started to import jewelry machinery from China to resell in Mexico, and I plan to reorder from China at the end of 2023.
Moreover, we have been able to keep our customers very happy with stellar reviews from our clients as shown here.
In September 2022, I hired a marketing agency to manage our Instagram account with the idea to grow this channel and start selling through Instagram. I had no time anymore for that.
I gave them a try for 6 months and they were unable to make any significant growth or sales and so, I stopped working with them in February 2023. Right now, this is my assistant that is managing our Instagram account, our pictures are much less professional but we publish every day (only 4 publications a week with the marketing agency) which gives better results up to now in terms of follower growth and lead generation.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
My biggest problem in 2022 has been the lack of time. After hiring an assistant in early 2022 that was not up to the task, I had to fire him after 10 days of work, and we had to go to court because of that. After this event, I was disgusted and wanted to work alone, so I had a lot of work to do.
I also wanted to grow the number of product keywords of my online boutiques, so I have been focusing on this main marketing task all year long and could improve my traffic on my product pages by 35%, as shown in this graphic.
This work has been very important for me as I had done many tasks about SEO in the past, but I had never taken the time to test the effect of focused keyword research on my traffic generation.
Previously, I had always worked at creating backlinks, content, and product pages together, so I had no way to precisely track the exact cause of my traffic growth.
In 2022, I work almost exclusively at researching keywords easy to rank for, yet profitable, and tracked the results.
My test allowed me to be much more efficient now in choosing the right keyword and predicting if a new product keyword will generate traffic and sales or not.
In 2021, I also bought and received a modern J2R casting machine, allowing me to cast silver with Argon atmosphere. I was able to improve the casting quality of my products and gain production capacity.
In 2022, I started also to work with platinum, created a platinum jewelry collection to aim at a new market that will be profitable in the near future, and also started to work on an Intaglio collection.
I need to highlight that these two types of jewelry are very particular and different from the usual gold jewelry you can see everywhere. It requires tools and skills that set our jewelry workshop at the upper level of jewelry and will help us to find more profitable clients.
At the end of 2022, we had the opportunity to work on a diamond set gold rolex which was a very interesting job for us and opened my eyes to the gold and diamond watch market that I did not know about. So we plan to expand on this market too.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
2022 opened my eyes and has shown me my business was too dependent on sales made in France and that any economic problem in the country could hit me hard. So my biggest goal for 2023 is to grow our sales in the US. Translating my online boutique in Spanish to sell in Mexico is also part of the solution.
The other lesson of 2022 is that I can not work anymore alone, it has been too difficult for me in 2022 and now I focus on growing my team to help me out. First, with the assistant I hired in March 2023 and at the end of 2023, I plan to hire an apprentice to teach him jewelry and have some backup when one of my jewelers is sick or on holiday.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
While I have been very busy in the last years working with no defined goal for the business, just being busy to make it work day-by-day, I have now a clear vision of my business potential in the medium term, and how I could reach my goals.
My goal for 2023 is to reach 200 000 Euros in sales (between 200 000 and 220 000 USD depending on the exchange rate) which seems feasible up to now, this represents a 28% growth compared to 2022.
I plan to reach 1 000 000 Euros in sales in 2028 expanding my sales in the US and Mexico with the help of a bigger team. For that, I will require 5 full-time jewelers and 3 people to help me with administrative and marketing tasks.
To reach such a level of sales in 2028, I think I could sell:
- 500 000 Euros of jewelry in the US
- 350 000 Euros of jewelry in France
- 150 000 Euros of jewelry and machinery in Mexico
My personal goal is to be able to leave the business for three or four days giving full responsibility to my new assistant without being stressed out and relaxing, after 10 years of working a lot, I dream to have a break, both physical and mental.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
I have read a very interesting business book: The 1-page Marketing Plan by Alan Dibb. It changed my vision of business and marketing. I have not implemented it yet, but it pushed me to think of email marketing as a necessary growth generator for my business. Once again, because I lack time, I could not implement it in January 2023, as I focus on what I know best for now, but this is on my to-do list.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
My best advice to grow a business is to start with a goal for the year, and a detailed plan of action of what to do each month to reach that goal. Track the results, successes, and failures and improve semester after semester.
Usually, (this was my case) people give up their efforts for not seeing results, they assume they are not able to make it, while they do not give enough time to their efforts to provide results.
Success comes with persistence and patience.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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