We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Itzel Gidwani a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Itzel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Before I started my business, I knew I wanted to create jewelry, but I never really took any action towards my ideas. I always liked jewelry and started getting more piercings when I turned 15 (2015), and around that time I started to accessorize more. As the years passed, I started buying jewelry from various small businesses, mainly on Depop and Instagram, and really enjoyed how these shops created items matching their brand identities and all had different aesthetics and styles they expressed. Even with this love I had for collecting jewelry, I still never took the first step towards actually creating anything myself, until the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. Between 2020 and 2021 I never went out so I picked up a few hobbies, one of which was creating jewelry. At first, I mainly made earrings with glass beads and star pendants. I didn’t start selling my pieces until around 3 months after I started because I wanted to gain more experience in making jewelry and wanted to improve on the quality of my pieces. I also wanted to utilize good quality tools and findings and it did take some research to find what I was looking for. So once I had a clearer idea of what I was making, I started selling my pieces on Etsy. After a few months in 2021, I started to develop my brand identity more, and also saw growth in my skills; all my jewelry pieces started to look and feel better in quality. Most of my growth can be attributed to constant experimentation, gaining a better understanding of measurements, figuring out what bead shapes and colors look good together, and making pieces that I personally enjoy and love. After some time, I decided to launch a website as I wanted to express my brand identity in more personal ways (mostly purple, black, white, stars, spirals, and cow print). I originally started off as “Venitulz”, which is a mix between my legal name and venus. I recently rebranded to “Dreams in Scorpius” in November 2022 because I wanted to capture the evolution of my business in a new way and now have a new website that illustrates that as well. “Venitulz” was more purple, black, and white, but “Dreams in Scorpius” is something more colorful and even more experimental than before.

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

My name is Luka but I also go by Itzel and Isa. I am a proud genderfluid Latine. I recently graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Philosophy where I was also a peer advisor for community college students in the Los Angeles area and the 2021-2022 QTBIPOC Programming Assistant intern for UCLA’s LGBTQ Campus Resource Center. Now that I’ve graduated, I have had more time to focus on Dreams in Scorpius and have been working on new upcoming drops where I will sell experimental one-of-one pieces.

I started creating jewelry as “Venitulz” in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and started selling my pieces online in early 2021. In late 2022, I rebranded as “Dreams in Scorpius” to capture the evolution of my brand from primarily purple, black, and white pieces to more colorful and experimental pieces. I mostly sell one-of-one jewelry pieces such as necklaces, earrings, and bracelets as well as accessories like keychains and charms. Occasionally, I sell rings and glasses chains too but I currently keep most of my focus on necklaces and bracelets.

In regard to what I am most proud of, at the moment, is that I was able to rebrand and get to experiment even more with my pieces. I recently vended for the first time earlier this year, and did really well so I hope I can continue to vend at events as it was really fun to set up and personalize my booth and interact more personally with my customers. Vending really gave me the confidence to continue in the direction I’m going in and I want to eventually shift into doing more in-person events once I have greater means to do so.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my clientele has been advertising on multiple platforms to a variety of people and groups, such as Group Me, Facebook, Depop, and TikTok. While my business is primarily on Instagram, Instagram often shadow-bans small businesses and my posts are typically not seen even by my own followers, so it helps to get outside of the app and advertise to people who may even be generally interested in jewelry, but will always know someone who is. When I was a student, I always shared my drops and websites on Group Me to various class group chats and always succeeded in getting a few customers there!

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

As of right now, I currently sell on my own site via Big Cartel. I used to also sell via Shopify, but it became to expensive for me. I have also previously sold on Etsy and Depop. The pros of having my own site are of course, personalization and customization. I love being able to customize my site to fit my brand identity and aesthetic. On the other hand, it also depends on how much you pay for your site. For example, with Big Cartel, the current membership I have does not offer much customization, but I still enjoy that I can customize colors, fonts, and pages in my own way. When I had Shopify, I had way more customization options and was able to almost build my website entirely on my own, even though I had the option of utilizing templates. But, I paid a lot more for Shopify, whereas I pay around $10 a month now for Big Cartel. The main cons of having a website is that your products can’t be found online by simple searches, you have to do most of your advertising on social media platforms. For example, when I had Etsy, I got a few random customers here and there from using the search engine since people on Etsy have specific things they look for and can find within the site. Etsy also has a follower function, so customers can keep up to date with your products there more reliably than other social media platforms where it may be harder to see certain posts from shop accounts. Etsy is also more trustworthy to customers, since they can hold sellers accountable and people can also leave reviews on businesses and products that other customers can refer to. With a website, it requires much more to build trust among customers and it also requires more effort to bring customers to the site in the first place.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dreamsinscorpius.bigcartel.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreamsinscorpius/
• Other: email: [email protected]