We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jaclyn and Yasmin Gerakios and Greene. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jaclyn and Yasmin below.

Jaclyn and Yasmin, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Both of us had no background studies in business so it has been quite a learning experience for us on the operational side of things! It was challenging at first learning how to design and source our products. We had to figure out how to get in contact with manufacturers, what type of design file to send them, and what specifications were needed for each product type. To make it easier on ourselves we didn’t branch into additional product types until we had a good handle on creating pins. We definitely made many mistakes initially and still do whenever designing a new type of product. We’ve learned to be patient with this process and laugh through silly prototypes. Every time we create a new type of product it’s a learning experience. We don’t imagine the learning will ever stop as we grow our product line.

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

Fin Pin Shop is run by two women, Jaclyn & Yasmin, advocating for marine life through ocean-inspired products. Our story began in 2016 at a shark convention in Tampa, where we met and bonded over wearing the same shark leggings. As we are both biologists who love the ocean, we quickly became best friends (“seasters”) and decided to start a project that would make a difference for the oceans we love. Our products donate to over 20 nonprofits supporting research and ocean conservation while tapping into important messaging. Diving deeper into who we are individually, Jaclyn is an avid ocean advocate with a Bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in Marine Biology and Master’s degree from Nova Southeastern University in Environmental Education. She is a volunteer supervisor with her local sea turtle patrol and lives in FL with her husband, son, and rescue animals.
Yasmin believes art plays a powerful role in fostering environmental awareness and creates all of our designs with that goal. She obtained a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from Drexel University, and MBA from Florida International University.
We started with enamel pins and have expanded to products like stickers, apparel, jewelry, bags, and other accessories. We work closely with our nonprofit partners, which has helped us make waves on social media and build an audience of people from around the world who want to help save our oceans, and have fun doing it.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

We are most proud of the awareness and support that has been brought to the species we’ve illustrated. Last year we got to name a stranded sea turtle, “Greene Bean”, pay for his care, and even film his release back to the ocean. It’s so amazing when people come up to us at shows or engage on social media and mention Greene Bean, the release, and how it impacted them. We are so happy we’ve been able to partner with so many amazing nonprofits over the past several years and have contributed to such important research and conservation efforts. We have met so many amazing people on this journey and everyday we are humbled by the support we receive from our customers, who we lovingly call our “Fin Fam”.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

We started with enamel pins and Instagram! What helped us build our audience the most was probably being part of our own target audience. What we mean by that is our audience is people who share our love for the ocean and are passionate about environmental conservation. The first pin we created was a mola mola AKA sunfish, which is a peculiar looking fish. We shared our posts with our friends (fins) in the environmental community and word of mouth gave us our first followers. We understand our audience because we like the same things, which is very helpful when creating new products. Another important thing we did was making friends with other pin makers on Instagram. We shared our products with each other and brainstormed ideas on how to grow our audiences. Since then we have expanded to products like stickers, apparel, jewelry, bags, and other accessories. We also work closely with our nonprofit partners, which has helped us make waves on social media and build an audience of people from around the world who want to help save our oceans, and have fun doing it. Our advice would be to connect with other makers and really understand your audience. When you know your audience, it’s easier to know what they want to sea.

Contact Info:

• Website: Finpinshop.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/finpinshop
• Facebook: Facebook.com/finpinshop
• Twitter: Twitter.com/finpinshop
• Other: Tiktok.com/@finpinshop Patreon.com/finpinshop

Image Credits
Katie Murray Photography Inwater Research Group