IN THE STUDIO WITH POPPY AND MARIA JEWELLERY
Sometimes all it takes is something missing in the market to bring to life something new and exciting. Such was the case with Poppy and Maria Jewellery. We recently sat down with the duo behind this luxe, yet affordable jewellery line to find out how these Creative Founders joined forces and to pick their brains about some of the successes and challenges they’ve had starting a new jewellery brand.
You have recently launched your first creative business, Poppy and Maria Jewellery. Have you both always known you wanted to be entrepreneurs?
Yes, definitely. Poppy had spent over a decade in the fashion industry and Maria worked mainly in the online marketing industry, but we both had a view to someday take what we had learnt and apply it to something of our own. It was really when we met each other and started discussing owning our own businesses that we were brave enough to take the plunge.
How did the idea of starting your own jewellery collection come about?
Both of us are lucky enough to have super stylish mothers, so we always been interested in fashion and jewellery and loved collecting unique pieces from a young age. We met three years ago at our previous job at Singapore Tatler and became fast friends. It was on about our millionth conversation bemoaning the lack of really good quality, unique jewellery at accessible prices, that we decided to just take the plunge and look into creating our own line. From that day, we have never looked back but all in all, it took around eight months to come into fruition.
While all your branding and marketing looks effortless, what have been some of the biggest learnings in starting your business to date?
As we had been working for large companies previously, one of the main things we learnt is what is good for a large organization might not work for a small one. The power of social media is such that we have really had to learn how to make the various channels into not just branding exercises, but commercial vehicles too.
As a new business, what marketing channels are you focusing on to drive awareness of your new brand?
Well, we have rather a limited budget in terms of marketing so that always makes this area somewhat of a challenge. At the moment, a great deal of our customers have come from word of mouth from existing customers – Singapore being so small has its advantages! Apart from that, our main focus is through social media, especially Facebook and Instagram. In terms of branding, we are selling our jewellery on several marketplace sites across the world which is a win win for us; they help us with our marketing on their site, we get great exposure and it solidifies us as a good quality, reputable business.
What percentage of your online sales come from within Singapore and abroad. And which countries are your biggest markets so far?
At the moment, around 70% of our sales are from within Singapore, the other 30% is spread throughout Europe, Hong Kong and Australia. But, we have just recently launched, so as with everything digital, this can change at any time!
Right now do you do most of your selling online through your website and hardtofind.com.au. Is your business model to sell only online or are you looking at selling in retail stores, pop-ups, fairs too?
Well our initial plan was to mainly focus our efforts online, but as we have been going, this has changed somewhat. We have been really fortunate that we have been approached by several online sites as well as a couple of retail stores about selling our pieces with them and have found the pop ups that we have done so far to be so successful, that we are more taking it as it comes. Online is always going to be our biggest area of focus, but pop-ups and concessions in boutiques are great for branding.
If you had 5 free hours with a consultant, what areas of your business would you ask for help with?
Without a doubt, conversion. In terms of online shopping, Singapore is still well behind the trend, and while pop-ups and marketplaces are great, we really want to increase our own online conversions. All the factors are there in terms of visitation to the site, we know our product is great quality and have received wonderful feedback from customers, but getting someone from browser to customer is always the hardest challenge.
If you could collaborate with any person or brand who would it be?
Without a doubt, Iris Apfel. From her personality to her style, she is so unique and wonderfully quirky. We would love to see how she would mix our jewellery with her sartorial style.
Singapore has an amazing start-up hub, have you gotten involved in any female entrepreneurial groups?
Not actual formal groups, but a great deal of our friends own their own businesses, so it’s been nice having that support system from them. Everyone is at different stages of their businesses so sometimes it’s us asking and them telling and sometimes the other way around. It’s also been very useful for when we want to do pop up shops as we can get together lots of different brands and share the cost of the space.
Can you highlight one female creative entrepreneur in your community you would like to shine the spotlight on?
Hester Aba is someone who really inspires us. She was one of the founding members of Sassy which started with just one site and now has over 7 across the world. She turned being lonely in a new city (Hong Kong) to her advantage by starting up Sassy, which in the early days, worked as a way for other expats to not only discover the city, but to meet up and share experiences. She has great insight into what makes her brand work, stays calm under pressure and during my time at Sassy, I learnt an awful lot from her.
Check out Poppy and Maria Jewellery and please show your support!
website: poppyandmaria.com
instagram: instagram.com/poppyandmariajewellery
facebook: facebook.com/poppyandmariajewellery
pinterest: pinterest.com/poppyandmaria
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