We’re sharing a special interview today with Lori of Delisle Designs. We stumbled onto her blog post at the start of this year and in it she detailed all the amazing changes she had made in her business and the success those changes had brought her. We knew she was the perfect person to share with you to get some advice and inspiration for your own business so we hope you enjoy the interview!
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.
I started a luxury line of handmade, faith-based jewelry, called Salt & Light by Lori Delisle, about 6 years ago when I realized that most faith based jewelry was plain, generic, or inexpensive trinkets. As a personal stylist, I was always on the lookout for quality pieces that not only had a great and uplifting message but were also stylish and fun to wear, so I set out to design jewelry that is as vibrant as today’s modern woman. I’m a wife, mother of three, CEO of two companies, volunteer at my church, mentor, and also happen to love art, music, traveling, clothes, shoes and jewelry. I design for dynamic women like me!
You made some major overhauls to your website and business last year. Could you tell us about some of them plus how they helped you?
Wow! Yes, I did A LOT last year and feel I have soooo much more to do! A big focus was exploring my target market and branding. Since most of my business is online, I have not met most of my customers. I had a very blurry idea of who they were and was designing and marketing to that sort of grey blur in my head. So instead of trying to analyze my current customers, I thought, “Who is my ideal customer? Where does she live, where does she shop, what are her favorite brands?” Because
I am a very visual person, I started making collages with pictures from magazines of women I would want purchasing my pieces.
Then I looked at the logos, print ads, and runway shows of fashion lines my ‘ideal’ woman might wear. I asked myself, “If I had a brick and mortar store front, some place on Rodeo Drive, what would it look like?” This all helped me solidify a more unified, upscale, branding with the design of my new logo, shop banners and product photographs and will be my guide as I work on a future website re-design.
Your product photographs are gorgeous! Any tips for other sellers to improve their photography?
Thank you so much! It took a lot of practice to get things like focus and lighting figured out. It is tricky with small shiny jewelry. Most point and shoot cameras can work if you use the “macro” setting (the one with the little picture of a flower) and turn off the flash. For shiny jewelry you generally want to make sure that your light source is not aimed directly at the piece or you will get an odd glare that the camera will have a difficult time processing. I converted an old TV cabinet, the kind with the big hole in it for a tube style television, into a permanent ‘light box’ in my studio. I draped all sides of the interior with white fabric and then used a bunch of small LED desk lamps for light. The rest of the cabinet is used for storage.
Don’t be disheartened when you first look at your pictures. Using the basic photo editing software that comes with your camera can make a huge difference. The main thing I usually tweak, aside from cropping, is the contrast. Increasing the contrast can often make slightly blurry lines more clear and whites whiter. Practice tweaking until you get the look you like.
You work a lot with precious stones and metals. Is there anything special when it comes to pricing that you keep in mind?
This is such a touchy subject with people and was another major point I addressed last year. The first thing I needed to do was make a major decision: “At this point in my career, is my goal sheer numbers, how many pieces can I sell?” I realized the answer was an emphatic “NO!” I’d rather put my ego aside and spend my precious time making a smaller number of high-priced pieces instead.
Underpricing my pieces for years, I never lost money and was able to re-invest small amounts in the business, but I did not take home a profit. My heart was in the right place; I wanted my pieces ‘affordable.’ I was pricing for people I knew in my immediate circles. But my friends were not necessarily the ones buying my pieces. Most of my sales were to complete strangers. I realized that there were plenty of women out there that could afford higher prices. Just take a walk around higher-end department stores or browse through fashion magazines. Women will pay A LOT more than I am charging for jewelry.
So here is my point: Know who you are marketing to. Know what they like to spend and where they like to shop. Price your pieces so that you are including EVERYTHING in the price; your time, packaging, overhead etc. If your prices and your market don’t match, maybe you need to rethink your product. But maybe, just maybe, you need to rethink your market as well.
Have you ever encountered an obstacle that you feared would lead to your business’s failure? How did you overcome it?
I think the biggest obstacle for most ‘artists’ is their mind. We have constant inner battles over whether we/our product/our talents/our art are good enough, whether anyone will like us/our art/our product etc. It is a profession in which you make yourself very vulnerable. We pour so much of ourselves into our art that our product IS us. It is our heart, our emotions, our inner thoughts and beliefs, and sometimes literal blood, sweat and tears. So when people don’t buy a piece, don’t stop by our booth or comment on our Facebook page WE can feel rejected and passed over.
The only way I have found to overcome these mind battles is to know that I was created to do this. It seems that every time I get in a funk and want to give it all up I get a message from a customer and realize that in the end, it really is not about me. “Lori, I just got my pendant you made for me in the mail today. It is AWESOME! It’s exactly what I was looking for! … I have been looking for that special pendant for what seems like forever. Thank you so much for all your help with the design … I will be sure to spread your name and website!” I am so grateful for those customers who take the time to ‘come back’ and encourage me! They are a big reason why I am still pursuing.
We really hope you enjoyed our interview with Lori of Delisle Designs. Be sure to check out her site for more inspiration.
It was a pleasure Megan!