We recently connected with Joanette Aird and have shared our conversation below.

Joanette, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

I started making beaded jewelry and eventually started making gifts for friends and family. Then I progressed to taking small orders and had my first jewelry show at my church in 2015. I took metalsmithing classes at Dougherty Art School and ACC, just for ‘fun’ and to learn a new skill. Life happened and I had a career as an engineer, but people were always telling me to start a business with my hobby, I never did …. until 2021.

Now running my LLC Joanette Collections, I design and make rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces for men and women in silver and gold. I often wished I had stared my business sooner. I really could have capitalized on the networking customers, tools and designs I could have curated if I had started sooner. Of course it’s no guarantee things would have turned out ‘as expected’, but I think I would have had a head start.

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?

I am a jewelry hobbyist turned entrepreneur. I am an immigrant from Jamaica and I moved to the US in 2007 and went to study engineering at Texas State University. It was an incredible opportunity I am grateful for today but my hobby has always been making jewelry. I would make jewelry at home between homework assignments, studying, listening to music and while watching YouTube videos. It was my ‘therapy’.

I design and make rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces for men and women in silver and gold. I also set stones into my pieces such as garnet, amethyst, peridot, opals and more in my kitchen! It is labor, but definitely a labor of love. Joanette Collections offers a collage of inspired stylistic options different from other brands.

I am proud of the fact that I do my own soldering and I set stones into jewelry myself. I create designer jewelry with semi-precious stones from around the world and inspire others to wear them. I am most proud of the journey and the fact that people think my pieces are unique and special. What sets me apart is that my business is ran by a Caribbean woman with a unique eye to create astonishing pieces of jewelry using semi-precious stones.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I first started making jewelry (as a hobbyist) I was making beaded jewelry. It was fun, having those visits to hobby lobby and going ‘ham’ in the jewelry section. I even had my first show , where I made nothing but beaded jewelry. Even though I made some money. It wasn’t lucrative enough and I learned something – the piece was not repeatable.

You can have fun making ‘one-offs’, a term they use in the jewelry to describe ‘one of a kind’ pieces, but if you sold your best jewelry set to a client, I couldn’t repeat the design. I didn’t have a way to make the same beaded jewelry, every time with the same measurements. Also, the jewelry market is saturated and there were plenty of people that made beaded jewelry using industrial stringing tools and could get the volume necessary in less time. I had to figure something out.

I started taking metal smithing classes back in 2014, as usual it started out as just for ‘fun’, until I learned I was good at soldering, and I could design more beautiful pieces in precious metals, such as gold and silver. The new skill allowed me to pivot into a new (and more profitable) business model.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I haven’t cornered the market on social media followings, but one thing that has helped me on Tik Tok and IG is videos explaining things, answering FAQs or showing the process of creating my work. I’m always surprised when people choose to follow, especially on Tik Tok because its so saturated. Its definitely something I need to lean into more because consistency is everything, you get better as you create, not the other way around!

Contact Info:

• Website: joanettecollections.com
• Instagram: @joanettecollections
• Facebook: @joanettecollections
• Other: Tik Tok: @joanettecollections