We were lucky to catch up with Rebecca Paxman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Rebecca, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

In 2017, I was sexually assaulted outside of my workplace after I got off work. I received help from Victims Advocates to help cover the costs of hospital bills, doctors, and therapist visits. The total the VA put towards me was about $20,000. The job I was assaulted at fired me while I was in the hospital. My PTSD made it hard for me to work in a normal setting as the assault happened at work, so I couldn’t keep a job for long. I also knew that if Victim Advocates paid that much for my experience, that they must pay a lot to other victims. In 2019, decided that I would take my creative abilities and my story to help others. Thus, Havenly was born. I hand-make and sell needle felted jewelry and accessories- my earrings are most beloved by my customers. With every purchase, 15% of profits are donated back to Victim Advocates in hopes I can help someone in a similar situation that I was in. I share my story, my healing process, and my advocacy to my customers and followers often. I have found that not everyone is open and accepting to hear/talk about something that is so common, yet taboo, but the right audience has and will continue to find and follow along. It has been so healing to have Havenly. I am so proud that I took something so bad and turned it into good. Running a small business isn’t easy, but I wouldn’t do anything else! Havenly is my dream career and I hope everyone can see the good it brings into the world.

Rebecca, 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?

One thing I absolutely love about my product, is the uniqueness of it! Needle felting is a hard skill to acquire, and there’s no machine that can duplicate it. It can only be done by hand. Not a lot of people do it for those reasons! I’ve been felting for 5 years and I still see myself improving on this skill! I create all of my own designs on my own- so no one else has them! Some earrings take an hour to make, some take 7. And not all earrings are the same, Each one is just as unique as a snowflake: similar, but if you look close enough you can see the difference and beauty in it. Felt is so light weight, I can make my earrings large and they’ll still weigh close to nothing! My earrings are great for those with stretched piercings or who can’t handle the heavy earrings. I am always thinking of other mediums I can bring into my felt work to bring my earrings to life. I have loved seeing my creativity and talent evolve over the years. I most recently started experimenting on scented earrings!

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

One of my proudest sales stories is in Christmas sales 2021. I don’t pay for marketing and I don’t have that many followers. What I do have is really loyal customers and a unique product. I sell my accessories in launches. Talking, sharing, and excitement leading up to a date can really change how well a product sells! The excitement over it was so loud I knew I didn’t have enough product to go around, so I was honest about how quickly they will need to buy if they really wanted it. For my Christmas launch I made $2000 in under 4 minutes. And I sold out of everything within a day! I made over $12,000! This was my biggest milestone ever. My husband and I watched that day in stunned silence. To surreal and shocked. I have never even come close to making that much. I was lucky to make $2000 on a good month! My husband is so proud and always sharing with everyone this milestone. He says to me, “You have inspired me to make my own business.” I had put in a lot of work to make everything- by myself!- and had a lot more work to put in to ensure my customers got it in time for them to enjoy. The following year, I made $10,000 every month just me working! I had to look for employees and look into manufacturing later so I could keep up and sell more!

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I don’t have a manufacturer- YET! We started looking in 2022, and we looked into literally hundreds of them! As I previously stated before, needle felting is rare and can only be done by hand. So a lot of manufacturers couldn’t help me on my journey because they do not have anyone who can make them for me. We went through meetings after meetings of team members trying and looking for ways to help me. We had a lot of false promises. We put a lot of money into manufacturers to make product only for them to drop us before they could start! We finally found one in about May 2023 who has the resources to manufacture for us. It is a manufacture that actually only takes in rare and unique businesses so it’s hard to get accepted! They accepted our application but require $50,000 up front. I am in the process of saving up and getting started, but unfortunately the current economy has set my business back a little bit. Here’s to hoping 2024 is the year we can finally manufacture!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://havenlyco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/havenlyco?igsh=MWV5ZHdzeTBmYWIzMQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@havenlyco?_t=8iOwK25KVkQ&_r=1