We were lucky to catch up with Jamie Hollier recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jamie , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

Regardless of what you are creating, focus on the people side of your product. Before starting Balefire, I worked as a product owner building custom software for the nonprofit and healthcare industries and I realized pretty quickly that building custom products, whether a ring or an application, is all about the people. In the software industry I was focused on the people side of what we were building, spending my time on understanding who our user was and why they needed what we were creating, along with an emphasis on education and creating a shared vision for all our stakeholders. Custom jewelry is really similar. We spend a lot of our time understanding the lifestyle, goals, and vision of our customers along with helping to education them about pros and cons of the different options out there. At the end of the day, I believe people are happiest with their product when their unique needs and wants, maybe even some they didn’t know they had, are integrated thoughtfully into personalized solutions.

Jamie , 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?

Jewelry, especially important pieces like wedding or engagement rings and other commemorative pieces, are more than just aesthetics. These pieces are symbols of life’s most important moments, pieces intended to be worn for a lifetime. Creating something that carries that level of importance is a unique opportunity and is one of the most fulfilling aspects of my work. As a custom jeweler, I don’t just make beautiful pieces, but I also weave stories, values, and lasting design together to create pieces that are unique to each client, pieces that fit with them and their lives.

The custom jewelry items we create at Balefire stand apart for many reasons: One is our focus on finding the right fit for each client, as I mentioned above, but we also focus on creating jewelry with responsibly sourced materials. We are fortunate to work with a diversity of miners, cutters, and dealers from around the globe that not only allow us to have traceability into a stone’s journey from the ground to a finished piece, but also provide us with more unique stones with a bit more personality. Additionally, we also work with recycled metals and are also open to working with our client’s existing jewelry pieces to create something new.

Our other focus is on creating jewelry in a lasting way. We are less about trends and more about crafting unique pieces that are made using time honored techniques that last a generation or more. Part of our approach with this is using a broad diversity of techniques, from hand fabrication to CAD and casting, catering each the process for each piece to be the best approach for that specific design. The other part of this is about education. Not all stones are great for daily wear, not all designs hold up over time, and we always talk about the realities and trade offs with these choices with our customers.

Part of why I started Balefire is because I believed that jewelry could be more unique, more lasting, more responsible, and just better overall. That vision has gotten noticed. Since we have opened we have been honored to be recognized by Westword, Arvada Press, Denver A-list, and even named one of America’s Coolest Stores. Our work has appeared in the New York Times, 5280, Brides, Conde Nast Traveler, and more. Most importantly, we have received the most amazing reviews, thank you notes, and more for our wonderful clients.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Jewelry is a trust industry. As a jeweler we are often entrusted with sentimental items and family heirlooms for repairs or as a starting point for creating new pieces. Our work is meant to last for decades or longer and symbolize important moments in our lives. These are not everyday purchases and that means our reputation and relationships with our clients is paramount.

My style has always been a fairly straight forward, tell it like it is approach and I think that helps in our industry. As a company, we don’t get salesy, we will tell you if we think something is a bad idea, we listen to our clients and will work to come up with novel solutions, we will spend time providing context and education so that we are all on the same page. These aspects of the Balefire approach, along with our creative designs and years of experience making jewelry, truly do set us apart.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We are actually working toward a pivot at Balefire right now. When I originally started Balefire, it was a small retail store featuring artisan made jewelry and goods with a tiny bit of custom work. Six years later, custom work is the vast majority of our business.

It has been a struggle to balance both running a large retail store with inventory, art shows, and more alongside the time demands of making sure each of our custom clients gets the amount of time and attention we feel is needed for our process. We have been making it work ok, but as we grow that balance continues to get harder to maintain.

Based on this, we will likely be moving out of our beautiful storefront in just over a year and will instead focus on a smaller, scaled down retail collection in a smaller location. This will allow us to focus more of our time on our custom clients and custom appointments while still having a scaled down collection of finished jewelry in our gallery when our clients need the perfect gift.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://balefiregoods.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balefire_goods/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/balefiregoods

Image Credits
For My Photo: Vanessa Mir For Rings: Vee Guereca