We were lucky to catch up with Jordan Elbaum recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Rachel Rose Collective is an idea I’ve had in my back pocket for a really long time. I would always walk into those trendy little shops and say “if I could – I would just create gift boxes for people as my job, with all of these cool things.” I said that here and there for a few years before I decided to take the plunge. I didn’t want it to be your average gift box that is full of candy, weird smelling soap and useless items. I wanted it to be items that are aesthetically pleasing, coming from small businesses that align with my values of sustainability and wellness. No one wants to spend money on a gift that’s going to get thrown in the trash. Let’s make receiving non-toxic, aesthetically pleasing cleaning products, as a gift, exciting! As these ideas were pouring out – the pandemic hit and I had nothing but time, so I decided to see if I could make this into a reality. I knew it would be a worthwhile endeavor because I didn’t really see too many wellness focused gift box brands on the market.

Jordan, 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?

I’m Jordan, the founder of Rachel Rose Collective.

During 2020 we felt a huge shift in the world and I felt a huge shift in myself. I wasn’t living in my “flow” anymore. I’ve always loved giving people gifts, but none of the gift boxes out there ever hit all the spots to give to my friends. I created Rachel Rose Collective so that I could make aesthetically pleasing gifts that align with wellness and sustainability, while supporting small businesses. There are no weird smelling soaps, tacky keychains or gummy candy, here. We focus on clean, non-toxic ingredients, housewares, and beauty products you’ll actually use. It’s always important to me that gifts are equally as useful as they are beautiful. Each gift is carefully curated to feel personal, be useful and look beautiful as if you hand-picked it yourself.

Fun facts! I’m a food photographer/recipe developer and in what feels like a different life, a former event professional (hence why I love a good theme!) I would eat sushi for breakfast lunch and dinner everyday if I could and I reaaaallly love surprising people with unique gifts! When I’m not running around with my pup Cashew, I love finding new clean skincare products and cooking up new recipes in the kitchen with my husband.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I think deciding on starting a new business is a huge feat in itself. It takes a lot of bravery and courage because it is such a huge risk, in so many ways. People are always very hesitant to talk about money in any situation but especially when starting a business. Sometimes it seems like when others start businesses, it comes easy. They say they’re starting this new business and they somehow have this magic money and are successful overnight. In my case, and I’m going to be completely honest here, I started Rachel Rose Collective on Christmas money and credit cards. I was grateful to have started moving toward my goals around holiday time so I was able to save some money from friends and family, along with some funds from my freelance business and the rest on credit cards. There are many “start up” fees and things add up really quickly, like equipment, inventory, So it was really helpful to have even the least bit of a head start.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We currently use shopify to host our website, which I really like. It’s easy to use, it keeps track of inventory, orders, and customer information. We also utilize Instagram and Facebook shop. This definitely get’s some traction for customers looking to purchase immediately. We’ve dabbled in Etsy a little bit but haven’t fully committed so I can’t really speak on that quite yet.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rachelrosecollective.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelrosecollective/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/rachelrosecolective