It Takes a Village

When I decided I wanted to make jewellery, I naively thought I would spend quite a lot of my time making jewellery. That was adorable.

Apparently, I needed several new careers.

Over the past months, I’ve discovered that starting a small jewellery business also means becoming, at various points, a photographer, website designer, copywriter, product photographer, packaging expert, stock manager, amateur lawyer, accountant and — apparently — someone who needs to understand European packaging legislation.

All while working full time.

There have been days when I’ve spent hours adjusting photographs, reading legal documents or trying to understand some tiny website setting, only to realise at the end of the evening that I haven’t actually touched my jewellery bench.

Things I never knew I needed to know.

And then there are the things I never even knew I needed to think about.

How do I keep track of every gemstone and finding I buy? What information needs to be on an invoice? Which box fits which necklace? What happens when someone returns something? What exactly needs to be in my Terms & Conditions? How do I photograph a tiny gemstone without making it look completely different from how it looks in real life?

And why, exactly, are there so many kinds of packaging?

A newfound respect.

Somewhere along the way, I realised something else: I had massively underestimated how much work other people know how to do.

I have a newfound respect for photographers who understand light without taking 47 photographs and hoping one works. For web designers who can make something beautiful and make all the buttons behave. For lawyers who can read a page of legal language without their eyes glazing over. For people who understand logistics, packaging, inventory and all the invisible systems that make a business actually function.

But most of all, I have a new respect for small business owners.

Because behind something that looks very simple from the outside — a website, a few photographs, a collection of jewellery — there can be an astonishing amount of work that nobody ever sees.

Back to the bench.

And strangely, I’m glad I’ve had to learn all of it.

I still don't want to be a lawyer. Or a web designer. And I would very happily never make another spreadsheet in my life.

But all of those things are slowly building the little world around the part I actually love: sitting down at my bench, surrounded by gemstones, and making jewellery.

Hopefully, once everything is finally up and running, I’ll get to spend a little more time there.

Although I have a suspicious feeling there will be another piece of legislation waiting for me by then.