We were lucky to catch up with Emily Jaime recently and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The idea for Yireh first came to me when I was 18 years old and on a 6th-month backpacking trip around the world! I got to meet so many different people and experience cultures much different from mine. After my trip I was so inspired by all that I had seen I knew I wanted to start a business that highlighted the uniqueness of people. However, traveling so much really opened my eyes to the realities of a lot of artisans. They work hard, sometimes in dangerous conditions for very little in return. I vowed to never take part in that when I started my own company,

While I was in college I received a scholarship to study abroad and moved to Indonesia. While I was there I decided it was time and designed my first collection working with artisans I met while living there!

We’ve since scaled to working with a woman-owned, WRAP-certified ethical factory, that produces very little waste. Our mission has stayed the same from my years as a teenager traveling the world. We exist to bring joy through our clothing, allow women to set their own beauty standards, and produce responsibly! We believe in humanity over profits!

Emily, 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 name is Emily Jaime and I am the owner of Yireh! I am from the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i. Being from an island has really influenced my designs and our brand’s voice. I love to create pieces that are versatile, and that can be worn dressed up or down but are also comfortable and easy to wear! We work with artists to design our exclusive prints which we are best known for! We often use Native Hawaiian florals in our designs to celebrate the unique culture and geography of Hawai’i. Yireh’s clothing is bright, colorful, and designed with women in mind.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We have a very high customer return rate as well as a good influx of new customers monthly! We have found that the best way to keep up brand loyalty is through our weekly newsletters, texts, social media post, and through good old-fashioned customer service! We use Klaviyo for our email marketing system and have found it to be incredibly useful because it syncs up with Shopify seamlessly. We use Attentive for our SMS marketing and have noticed that we are seeing a major increase in sales through SMS over email. We use Asana to create a social medial posting schedule. Every two weeks we plan our post and the topics we want to discuss, this has really helped us to continue to deliver relevant content to our community! We also believe in great customer service. Being on an island, coconut wireless is real! We want to provide the best service and are continually complimented on it. We use Gorgias to help upkeep customer service tickets and it has helped our workflow a lot. What is also very important to us is that our is always positive. We make it a point to schedule in emails that have nothing to do with sales, and are simply just a nice note or word of encouragement to send out. It is important to connect with your community relationally rather than just trying to sell sell sell!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I started my business officially when I was 22 years old, and had very little money, to say the least. I decided to get the money I needed I would make and sell shell jewelry. I saved up about $6,000 and used that to launch my first collection. I more than doubled the $6,000 with my first release and continued to snowball our sales back into the business until I created a sustainable amount of capital to expand! So I started out making something myself that wasn’t necessarily what I wanted my business to be long-term but used it to get started.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopyireh.com
• Instagram: @yireh_
• Facebook: facebook.com/shopyireh
• Other: Tiktok: @yireh_

Image Credits
Kenna Reed