We were lucky to catch up with Kate Kim recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

When I started the brand back in 2014 it was apparent from the beginning that shipping, distribution and E-Commerce as a whole has elements that can be damaging to the environment, with all of the plastic usage in shipping goods etc. So for many years we have made a conscious effort to reduce our waste as a company, specifically in our plastic usage in shipping goods and focusing on minimal packaging. As of 2023, Caitlynminimalist also began donating 1% of our profits to 1% FOR THE PLANET, an international organization whose members contribute at least one percent of their annual revenue to environmental causes to protect the environment.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Creating jewelry has always been a passion of mine. I began my journey in the industry by designing high-end pieces, but my focus shifted when I went away to college. I transformed a letter written by my grandfather into a necklace, replicating his handwriting exactly. This beautiful piece provided me with daily comfort, knowing he was close to me. The necklace garnered significant attention from friends and family, all of whom expressed interest in having their own personalized jewelry. However, as college students, my friends couldn’t afford luxury items.

This realization led me to where I wanted to focus my efforts: crafting sentimental jewelry at affordable prices.

I felt a calling to establish a brand that could bring the same joy and comfort my friends and I experienced. I wanted people to celebrate their loved ones and the life they share through timeless, meaningful jewelry.

It’s been quite a journey from taking the business out of my home and into an office and distribution center. Sometimes it can be surreal to see the growth but it has all happened one step at a time.

We’ve always done our best to keep things fresh and to constantly try to innovate and adapt to the changing E-Commerce landscape. I’m excited to see where we are headed next.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

I first started my brand on the ETSY platform and I was very happy there originally. I treated it like a business from the start whereas most people back then (2014) were still treating ETSY like a side hustle. I was answering emails within 5 minutes of receiving them and ensuring that I close the sale and do my best to make my new customers very very happy. So I was able to gain some quick traction there, but it was also much much easier to obtain new leads and customers because ETSY is essentially a digital mall and I had prime real estate. I was doing some slight advertising inside the platform and ensuring that I practiced empathic listening while conducting customer service, something that I feel really helped me get word of mouth and some positive reviews.

It wasn’t until about 4-5 years into selling on ETSY that I even considered branching out and launching my own website. I could have most likely done it earlier but I was happy on ETSY and things were going smooth. I was rising in the ranks and quickly becoming one of the top sellers which is when I started to realize that I didn’t want to have my brand and business tied by the hands of just one selling platform. Etsy could make any kind of algorithm change or shut down or who knows what and my business could be in trouble. So I decided to launch Caitlynminimalist.com with the hopes to slowly build it to the levels and success that I have with ETSY. That was back in late 2019 early 2020, and after 4 years or so…I have finally managed to have a close revenue split between the sites on a daily basis. It is much more difficult to build your customer base on your own independent site, since you need to get all of the traffic on your own. With ETSY, when they advertised it benefited our business…since it’s bringing new eyeballs to the platform and we are one of the top sellers. But with our own site, there was no large publicly traded corporation there with a big advertisement budget to spend, it was all on us.

It took some time but we have slowly built out our audience to find us both on ETSY and our own Shopify site. Where we certainly have more control over the brand and business. ETSY has always been there for Caitlynminimalist and I don’t see our brand moving away from ETSY anytime soon, but it’s good to know that it’s not the only way for us to be successful.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Oh yes, Mother’s Day 2016. I started the brand in 2014 and I was fairly new to many things such as branding and sourcing marketing materials. The brand logos colors and tones back then was black and white, and I originally was using very generic jewelry boxes since I was just starting out. Until mid 2016 when I finally decided to branch away from the generic black velvet jewelry boxes and create some custom branded boxes. I went with black branded cardstock box with a really cute drawer on the side to pull out to reveal your jewelry and have a great unboxing experience. I was very excited to get them out to customers and had them just in time for Mother’s Day. That late spring was very hot down in Southern California that year and it turned out that the black ink from the new jewelry boxes was bleeding due to the heat into the inside where the jewelry was being stored. This caused some the jewelry and the packaging inside to turn purple from the ink. I had no clue this was happening because it wasn’t that hot when I sent the packages out, but once I had given the lot to the post office it was out of my hands. The packages would sit in the hot trucks for hours and heat up….so I started getting email after email with complaints, it was a nightmare. I had to issue so many refunds and remake so much jewelry that year, and not to mention I was devastated for my customers! They had purchased from me and trusted me to send such sentimental gifts to their mother’s for the holiday and it arrived in such a mess.

We pushed through that holiday at a loss of course but I learned a very valuable lesson to double check everything!!! Now I always bake my new jewelry box designs, which is probably overkill but I’m not letting anything like that every happen again. I also changed all of our branding from Black and White to the more natural sand tones you see today. Who knows, it was probably a blessing in disguise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Caitlynminimalist.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlynminimalist/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CaitlynMinimalist
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CaitlynMinimalist