We were lucky to catch up with J & I Creations recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi J & I , thanks for joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

To us, success is about constant self-improvement and adapting to challenges. Being owners of a small business, there are always obstacles in our journey, but we try to keep a positive mind and learn from failures as much as from our successes.

We consider ourselves most successful and fortunate that we’re able to pursue our goals while still being able to spend quality time with our friends and family.

We believe success is a continuous effort of personal growth, meaningful accomplishments, positive impact, and a genuine alignment with one’s values and passions.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our names are Julissa and Itala, born and raised in Lima, Peru. My sister and I moved to the U.S. with our family at the ages of 4 and 12. Itala is a stay-at-home mom, who leads the designing and creative aspects of J & I, while also looking after her sassy 4 year old daughter, Kaylani. I’m a dog-mom to a very energetic Malshi named Loki and handle the daily operations and social media for our business.

We started J & I Creations late 2020, offering custom gift boxes and since then have expanded to creating personalized items for special occasions and other handmade pieces. Our small woman-owned business is located in Northern Virginia, where we have had the pleasure of working with other small local businesses. Building and maintaining these relationships have given us the opportunity to mutually support our clients while growing our business.

We take pride in our work and can attest to that with our customer testimonials. All of our creations are made with our customers in mind as inspiration and our main goal is making each and every order unique.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We design and hand-make most of our pieces from scratch. Since we are self-taught, we always look for useful online resources to gain more knowledge of our industry in order to create our best-selling items, which are personalized cake toppers.

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

Shopjicreations.com is our official website where you can find our popular items and submit orders. In addition to our website, social media has also been helpful to showcase our products and reach local businesses.

We decided to open our Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/JandICreationsShop) last year, allowing us to offer our products nationwide. It has increased our sales in a short period of time. Etsy’s ordering format is very user-friendly but unfortunately does have added fees for using their platform.

We’re committed to continuing innovating the business and excited to keep growing. Stay connected with us on our socials to see what the future holds for J & I Creations!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shopjicreations.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/j_icreations?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/J-I-Creations-101998381706378/
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/JandICreationsShop