We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ellen Markham. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ellen below.

Ellen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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.

All of our charitable donations support women and girls from around the world. As an import company, we sell goods from around the globe and feel it is important to give back to those communities. Rather than donating a percentage of sales, we have traditionally selected specific items and donate profits from that item to a specific cause. For example, we had a beaded necklace we called “The Malala Necklace” and all profits from the sale of that item were donated to The Malala Fund. A fire recently destroyed the Guna village of Wala in Panama where the women create beautiful mola, a unique reverse applique folk art. We had an opportunity to sell several pieces from our collection of mola and donated 100% of those sales to buy scissors, thread and fabric so that the Guna women could continue with their livelihood of making mola. We also make a monthly charitable contribution to Women for Women International. At home, we rent a small guest house through AirBnB and donate a percentage of each stay to airbnb.org to provide housing for those in need during times of crisis.

Ellen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My background is in the natural products and wellness industry, where I spent over 25 years in senior level sales and marketing roles for several top brands. I also had my own line of cannabis infused body care products called HoneyBeeBuzzed. Additionally, I held an executive role at a cannabis testing lab for several years until getting laid off during the Covid pandemic. The timing worked out in my favor, though, and I was able to buy Tika, an import company co-founded by my partner Bill over 30 years ago. Buying a business during a pandemic was scary, but it has proven to be an ideal situation for us. Bill and I share a home together and have found a balance in our personal/work lives. I focus on the day to day operation of the business and can always be found in the office. Bill is often on the road visiting clients, working on other projects at home. or preparing for trade shows. We have always traveled well together, and have shared adventures in Africa, Indonesia, China, Thailand and other places over the years. Tika affords us the opportunity to continue our travels on sourcing trips or collaborating with artisans in other countries. We also sell at local markets and trade shows and can be found at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show every year. I was fortunate to inherit a loyal customer base as well as a dedicated long time employee who is now our office manager. We recently updated our website and have a dedicated employee to manage our social media. Our business is primarily online wholesale via our website and select trade shows.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We are primarily a wholesale company and the majority of our business is done online. One of my 1st goals after acquiring the business was to not only make Tika my own, but to cast a wider net to grow our business. How could we attract more customers?

We opened an Etsy shop in an effort to reach more retail customers. The timing was not so good as the number of Etsy stores more than doubled during Covid. Our best selling products on Etsy were silk face masks made by our Fair Trade partners in Nepal from upcycled saris. Not surprising, as during April 2020 alone more than 12 million masks were sold on Etsy by more than 110,000 sellers! I think that if we were able to establish a customer base before the Covid pandemic on Etsy it could have been successful, but it was not a lucrative option for us.

We were vetted to sell on 1stDibs, a high end retail site and signed a one year contract. We featured our original silver earrings and pendants, as well as some of our collectable antique pieces. While we did have some sales, it was not the right platform or demographic for us.

We found success with Faire Wholesale, an online platform that serves as a virtual trade show for retail stores. We have been extremely happy with Faire and have achieved “top shop” status every quarter. They provide great customer service, helpful analytics, marketing ideas and promotions. We recently transitioned our old website to a new Shopify site and we are able to easily sync our products and inventory with Faire.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We fabricate some of our jewelry in house, others we design and have made for us. Bill began creating lampwork glass beads in Amsterdam when he was in his twenties and has been making and selling jewelry since then. Stones are his more recent passion; we have a stone cutting studio at home and make pendants from stones we cut as well as finished cabochons we have sourced. We have a longtime relationship with a master silversmith in Indonesia and collaborate on unique pieces together with him. We like to incorporate different components into our jewelry, for example, we cut emerald beetle wings and set them with other stones or fossils in sterling silver.

We also created a line of unique thermo-sensitive liquid crystal beads called Mirage Beads that change color with subtle temperature changes. Bill found a supplier in Taipei about 20 years ago that was making something similar to what he wanted, which was a color changing bead based on his old original lampwork bead. Since then, we have added more designs which we continue to have manufactured for us and Mirage Beads continue to grow in popularity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tikaimports.com
• Instagram: @tika__imports
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tikabeads/
• Other: https://airbnb.com/h/restfulredwoodsretreat