Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aixangela Caballero. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Aixangela, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Corporate America thrives on overconsumption; on selling a solution to a problem they made up themselves. This can be, and often is, as simple as deciding that you, the consumer, are lacking value and status if you don’t own whatever the company is trying to sell. One of the major ways we see this play out in real time is the overconsumption of clothing and the accelerated rate at which fast fashion brands are growing and expanding. This growth is unsustainable, unhealthy, and has detrimental effects on almost every group involved in the business process.

Clothing is produced with cheap and harmful materials, accessories are ripping off small business designs, garment and accessory workers are underpaid and placed in dangerous work environments, and the resources to create these pieces are causing real harm to the environment and affecting climate change.

I started Shuffled Vintage with the aim to prove that sustainability can be as, if not more, beautiful and coveted as buying new. By upcycling secondhand materials – items I find at local thrift shops, through donations, estate sales, etc – I feel that I can offer a new life to useful existing materials that would otherwise make their way to a landfill and further pollute our environment. There is no need to invest in cheap, cookie cutter products when it’s so much more fun to find art that speaks to you, and keeps the planet clean, too!

I have received incredibly generous donations of beautiful vintage jewelry to work with. I often learn that the jewelry held significant nostalgic and sentimental value to these people. I love repurposing these pieces into something the donor can actually cherish and appreciate, as opposed to leaving these pieces at the back of a drawer, collecting dust, and never being worn again. Now I’m able to share these pieces with more people and allow the stories behind the jewelry to take on new chapters, and eventually, hopefully , be broken down and repurposed again years from now.

If the industry could slow down – and consumers could slow down – and the emphasis on sustainable practices and repurposing materials of value , that have lasting power, could take up the mantle, we would have a lot less trash and a lot more freedom to express our individuality in ways that matter. We wouldn’t have to be boiled down to influence.

Aixangela, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Aixangela Caballero and I run Shuffled Vintage. I am a Puerto Rican and Cuban American environmentalist, writer, and jewelry maker (amongst other things). I have been making jewelry for more than half my life – I started in middle school after making my way into a class making earrings for teacher appreciation day. In the time that the other students finished one or two pairs of earrings, I was already on my seventh. At the end of the day, the teacher gave me a giant box filled with all the leftover beads told me I could take them home. I didn’t know at the time that the trajectory of my life changed when I accepted that box.

I sold my jewelry at varying degrees of dedication throughout middle school, high school, and college, but it never truly stuck. However, it was always part of me and how I enjoyed expressing my creativity. In 2020, I finally decided to give it a shot forreal. I started selling on Etsy and Instagram under “Aixi G Creations Co” and made a core part of my business to donate 10% of the profit to environmental justice organizations – in particular, the NRDC.

I’ve always been an environmentalist at heart. I remember taking notes as I watched Disney Channel commercials about how to be more eco-friendly and how to recycle. In elementary school, we would read about climate change, global warming, and the rising number of animals going into extinction. I was incredibly anxious about it, going as far as to collect the seeds from all the fruits eaten in my house and plant them outside (with absolutely zero success, but the inclination was there). As I grew up, so did rising concerns about our ecological state and the rapid degradation of climate health. It’s something I feel should be top priority, and I often wonder how it possibly isn’t.

Aixi G Creations Co was moderately successful – I learned a lot about social media, how to market my pieces, photography, SEO – the whole nine. But still, it wasn’t thriving the way I expected it to. I would go months at a time without creating or posting, unsure if it was something I really wanted to invest my time into. I juggled going to school, working retail, and trying to pursue other interests. It wasn’t until 2022 that I really embraced my potential and saw the value in creating my art.

I shifted to prioritizing the use of secondhand and vintage materials while still committing 10% of my profit to various environmental justice organizations – a different one every month, so that I could fund lots of different missions and share the important work they all do with my following. This new incarnation and renewed motivation was exactly what I needed for my business to grow. I made friends with lots of other small businesses online and started to gain an audience that loved what I did. I was on fire and more involved with building a business than I ever had been. But my dedication had to be questioned yet again.

My page, along with all my photos, and the trust I built with all my customers, was hacked in late 2022. I was extorted, threatened, and had no way to contact the hundreds of people being harassed under my name by the hacker. It was nearly impossible to reach anyone at Instagram or Meta – I spent weeks appealing to get access to my account. I watched as he deleted all my posts, all my reels, hours and days of creating content and editing falling into the abyss. After the longest two weeks of my life – scanning my face for verification, writing tons of emails to prove my identity, reporting and reaching out every single day – Instagram finally gave me an access code to get the account back. But by then, my page was a shell of what it had been. It was tainted, and I couldn’t shake the bad energy. I felt defeated and stopped focusing on the business again.

In an effort to get rid of the pieces I already had, I started posting my work in a Craft Swap and Shop group on Facebook. What I didn’t expect was the overwhelming attention I was getting for my jewelry. My pieces would sell out within an hour of posting them to the site. I was told how beautiful and unique my designs were, and asked if I had a shop, and when would I be making more? It was exhilarating! And I got my mojo back.

Thus, the last and final iteration of the saga was born: Shuffled Vintage. And it is the best thing I have ever done!

I have been able to combine my passion for sustainability, my art, and my desire to help the environment into my profession. I get to speak out about environmental injustice and prove the beauty in repurposing and buying secondhand through the jewelry I make. I am able to donate hundreds of dollars a year to organizations I believe in that do the work I hope to one day lead in the environmental justice space. And thousands of people support me in that journey, which is absolutely humbling and exciting to say!

I am so proud of helping people own their individual style and invest in jewelry that speaks to them. To give a new life to existing materials that don’t deserve to be in a landfill. To fight against cheaply made fast fashion accessories that rip off small business designers like myself and are poorly constructed with lousy materials. When people offer me donations, they are allowing me to add a new chapter to sentimental pieces that mean something to them. To reinvent them into something they, and many others, can love again.

We are an incredibly wasteful society. I love being a small part of the fight against that.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Authenticity is the biggest key to unlocking any market you’re trying to tap into. I speak out about the things I believe in and care about, I share what I’m having for lunch, I show people what I’m working on as I work on it. Social media is known for its insincerity, the performance, the blatant marketing that so many of us can see right through. When you can shed that veneer and people can actually connect with you as a person, it makes it so much easier for them to buy into YOU as an artist – not just your products at an empty face value.

I practice what I preach and I prove that to the people that support and follow my journey. I’m a young woman trying to do what I can to fulfill a mission that is important to me. They see that in the way I express myself and I speak to them. I respond to inquiries as quickly as I can, I support other small businesses, I’m transparent about my donations – there isn’t a single thing about my business that is hidden or nefarious.

I build my reputation by being true to myself and my goals.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I’ve had to pivot tremendously in my journey to reach the business I run now. I think the biggest change I had to make was deciding that I needed to work on Shuffle Vintage full time. I was very fortunate to reach a point where I could take some time away from working a traditional job and invest my time into Shuffled Vintage until it paid off. But creating the pieces, marketing, photographing, editing, posting, listing, planning drops, etc…it’s a lot to take on, and it wasn’t feasible for me to do any of it fruitfully if I wasn’t aiming all my attention toward it.

That may be different for others – I think some people can manage it all, and then some. But I know myself, and unless I’m putting forward my 100% in all aspects, I won’t feel that I’m doing myself or my customers justice. It wasn’t easy to allow myself to pursue this wholeheartedly, though. I got my degree in something else entirely – English Creative Writing – so I felt like I was letting people down by not pursuing that path. But I knew inside that I loved making jewelry and the privilege it allowed me to use my art for good causes. Some people in my life bet on me and supported me in that; I guess the most challenging pivot was finally betting on myself and making it happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shuffledvintage.com
• Instagram: @ShuffledVintage

Image Credits

Aixangela Caballero (myself)