We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lavinia Aghakhani. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lavinia below.

Hi Lavinia, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Our idea began as a fun crafts project. My sister Kamelia had found out about resin art and so we decided to try our hand at it. We initially realized that there was a learning curve to working with resin and so it took us some tires and failures to finally produce a few pieces of jewelry that were of good quality. We were quite pleased with what we had created and decided to continue and further perfect this craft. After a few months, we were able to create some very nice and unique jewelry pieces that incorporated our love of nature as well as this newfound craft style. Given how much we were enjoying our nature jewelry we decided to put some of our work up on Etsy to share it with others as well. The business side of things was completely foreign to us, so this was something we had to do a lot of research on and we’re still learning. However, to our surprise, our products were very well received. From then on, and by taking it a step at a time, we continued adding new designs and bettering our quality of work. Today we also have our own website and we participate in many art shows around our local city.

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?

L&K Elegance was founded by me and my sister Kamelia. We ethically collect flowers and preserve them in resin. Our work is made to look elegant, delicate, and comfortable with nature at its core. Though we are not the only ones who create resin jewelry, we do pride ourselves on having better quality, craftsmanship, and elegance, while ensuring comfort. We aim to remind the wearers of L&K jewelry that they are unique and beautiful just as nature is.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

The co-founder of L&K Elegance is my younger sister Kamelia. Ever since I was young I had always wanted to have a sibling, but my parents were not sure if they were ready for more children. Nonetheless, when I was nine I was blessed with a little sister. It was the best gift that I could have received from my parents. Although we had an age gap between us, we’ve been best friends since then and will always be so. We get along very well and have much respect for each other. Our business is a testament to what we can accomplish together and I couldn’t have asked for a better business partner.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Starting a business is generally daunting when thinking of all the startup costs. However, it’s not always as bad as it seems. We started very small when we began and our biggest expenses were legal setups and material costs. Luckily we live in a world today where anyone can have a store online with little to no cost. We started with Etsy and paid for our initial supplies from out of pocket but it was an investment well worth it. We both had some savings from working and family gifts/allowances and this was enough to get us a start. Taking it a step at a time makes things much more doable especially when it comes to crafts businesses that can be done at home and sold online.

Contact Info:

• Website: lkelegance.com
• Instagram: l.k_elegance
• Other: TikTok: lkelegance