We recently connected with Janelle Clasby and have shared our conversation below.
Janelle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?
Our Chief of Staff, Tony, started sending our Top Spending Customers on our website what he calls “Magic Mail” packages featuring hand-drawn art on the outside and fun thank you notes!
Eventually, this evolved into sending Trader Joe’s treats, custom care packages, and one-of-a-kind gifts from Thailand.
We then took it a step further. Without being asked, we sent 100 holiday care packages directly from Thailand to our top customers. Each contained slippers, an eye mask, an essential oil roller, and a candle. Sending comfort and kindness to our customers who support us!
In response, our customers started sending us care packages, holiday cards, and gifts.
Recently, we hosted a meetup at our headquarters in San Diego, and over 50 customers traveled from all across the US just to connect and meet each other.
A business can be so much more than just selling products; it can be a community.
Janelle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
For anyone just discovering us, Lotus and Luna is a female-founded brand dedicated to blending beautiful, comfortable fashion with real social impact. Headquartered in San Diego, California, we specialize in handcrafted, boho-chic apparel and accessories.
Our signature collections include our incredibly soft, breezy harem yoga pants, flowy clothing, and healing energy stone jewelry, like our best-selling Master Healer necklace.
But to truly understand what we do, you have to look across the globe to Northern Thailand.
How We Started: A Journey of Kindness
Our story began in 2016 when our founder, Janelle Clasby, was traveling through Asia. She fell deeply in love with Thailand and, more importantly, with the incredible kindness of the Thai people. Witnessing the heavy, daily stresses that come with poverty, she felt a powerful calling to create a business model that could offer a sustainable way out.
Janelle teamed up with our very first two artisans, Rung, and Watini, to design clothing, and jewelry products to bring back to the United States. Ten years later, our mission has never wavered: to provide steady, meaningful employment, educational resources, and fair wages to artisan villages. Today, those original two artisans are our Head Artisans, and our network has proudly grown to empower over 300 talented women and men in Chiang Mai.
What Sets Us Apart:
In a world dominated by mass-produced fast fashion and disconnected online shopping, Lotus and Luna bridges the gap between conscious shopping and effortless style.
For our Artisans: We provide consistent work, safe environments, fair compensation, and a platform for them to share their generational craftsmanship with the world.
For our Customers: Every piece you wear has a story and directly supports the person who made it, giving your wardrobe genuine soul.
What truly sets us apart, however, is that we do not view business as just a series of sales. We view it as a global community.
We are proud of the real, measurable change we’ve brought to our artisan communities, seeing families thrive, buy homes, and support their children’s educations.
If you are new to the Lotus and Luna family, we want you to know that your support has a massive ripple effect. When you wear our clothes or jewelry, you are not just wearing a product; you are welcoming our artisans’ joy, gratitude, and positive energy into your life.
A business can be so much more than just selling items. Together, we are building a world where fashion is kind, conscious, and deeply connected. Welcome to our community!
Can you talk to us about your experience with buying businesses?
We bought our building, 5780 Chesapeake Court, in 2022. Buying this building was investing in another business; we took on tenants, property taxes, maintenance, etc.
The acquisition process was intense: months of meetings with banks, creditors, and realtors. We provided years of tax returns, financial data, etc to obtain an SBA loan.
I remember emailing back financial information at 11:52 PM, and getting a reply back at 11:54 PM- we still need more information. Everyone in the process was ON IT. Minute-to-minute replies.
When we finally closed, I took a deep breath!
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
Yes, we manufacture our products in Chiang Mai, Thailand! One of the biggest hurdles we ran into was when we tried to add Gold Chain Jewelry to our jewelry manufacturing process.
Our artisans ran into the following issues making it in Thailand:
Chain tarnishing
Clasp tarnishing
Extender tarnishing
Connecting ring breaking
CHINA WAS A POTENTIAL OPTION
At this point, the easiest thing to do was to take our production out of the artisans’ villages and potentially produce gold jewelry out of China.
Investing in Our Artisans
TRUSTING THE PROCESS
Every decision we make is guided by our core mission. So, we pressed on. We purchased a machine to solder our products. We sent our top artisans to Bangkok to train for 1 week on how to use the machinery. We brought the machine back to Chiang Mai. We trained artisans, one by one. 3 years later, they are making all of our gold jewelry in Chiang Mai, in the same village!
PASSING THE TRAIT
Instead of going the easy route, we pushed on with our artisan and were able to provide them with:
Education
Tools/Machinery
A new skill set
Production in our artisans’ villages
It just takes a little bit of persistence and the willingness to carry on in the right way, even when it is easier to take a shortcut.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lotusandluna.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shoplotusandluna/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lotusandluna
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/17988892
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lotusandluna433?reload=9
Image Credits
Mick Flagello