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

Hi Rhonda, thanks for joining us today. Risk taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

The story of how RJB collections started was definitely a risk and stepping out on faith. I am a hairstylist by trade and my husband Is disabled. In 2020 when the pandemic hit because of my home being immunocompromised, I made the decision not to return to the salon until things got better. But then I ended up pregnant and then I was high risk so I could not return to the salon safely. This led us to think to figure out what we would do to supplement our income. We first Started making hand-painted wood jewelry and eventually fell in love with the medium polymer clay. With our limited income, we dared to step out on faith and invest in supplies to make jewelry that we didn’t know if it would sell or not. We had an idea and wanted to stand out as unique so we decided from the beginning that we would never duplicate or repeat any of our designs. We have now been going strong for two years and have never repeated any of our designs. We pride ourselves on our customers pieces being exclusively theirs. We had an Etsy store in the beginning and many told us that doing what we were doing was risky because Etsy doesn’t cycle stores that don’t have multiple like items as much as they do others. We defied the odds and did it anyway. We began to promote ourselves heavily on our social media and letting friends and family know we opened a store and within 6 months we had sold over 1,000 pieces! A year later we decided to take yet another leap of faith and my husband tirelessly worked on designing a website for us. Even though it was time consuming, it was a labor of love and a necessity as we could not afford to pay anyone. He wanted me to have an easier platform for the business and to be able to keep more of the profits. Now 10 months later, we have consistently sold over 100 items every month. We have a score of 100 on Go Daddy’s platform as one of the top performing sites and our review average is 4.9 with all 5 stars and only one 4 star review.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are a family based business in all senses of the business module. This business first started with my husband and I painting wood jewelry on a piece of cardboard in our bedroom. There were many ideas that we had but unfortunately were not able to execute them as we imagined with painting on the wood. Shortly after we discovered we could get the look we were imagining along with the color scheme with polymer clay. This led us to many discoveries with this medium. We have gone through many ups and downs with our techniques and still do! Once we got the hang of what we were doing, We began to teach our two oldest children who are now 11 and 15. They started out on a much better path than us because we had already been through the do’s and don’ts and were able to teach that to them. They begin to make pieces so well that we decided to dedicate two categories on our website to their items. The 11 year olds category is the Red Diamond collection and the 15 year olds category is the Jules collection. They have many repeat customers every month for their designs. So the unique part of RJB is that we have four creative minds making exclusive pieces for our customers. We do more than just earring pieces. We also offer necklace sets, bracelets, rings, men’s accessories, etc.. We never duplicate or repeat an exact design. We do however have signature looks and shapes. Some of these are the spirals, drapes, drop circles, statement pieces, salsa lady, etc. My husband (Jesse) Is known for his life like flowers that he creates. He does many of the sculpted designs that we have in the collections. He also has a men’s line of men’s lapels, cufflinks, and tie bars. I love to create very bold, vibrant, colorful, off the cuff pieces. I also pride myself on doing custom orders that match fabrics. I also enjoy the technique of caning. It is a challenge for me and I enjoy the challenge of it. Julian (our 15 year old) likes to do Opposite creations and has really taken off with screen printing techniques with the acrylic paint on the clay. Braylin (our 11 year old) enjoys a more classic contemporary style but gets exotic every once in a while. He prides himself on new techniques and challenging himself. We are most proud of the fact that we are truly a family-based business that works together and that we can teach them techniques that will help them to learn how to be self employed having the business know-how they need in their future careers. This also teaches them to be team players. Because of this vast origin of our collections, we have a wide range of sizes, shapes, colors,design, and pricing. There is something in our collection for everyone! Even though we do many statement pieces, the constant feedback we get is that our pieces are super lightweight! We want all of our customers to feel special wearing our pieces knowing that their piece is exclusively theirs.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We have slowly been building our social media presence through organic word of mouth and organic follows. We are happy to say that a great percentage of our followers have purchased at least once from our website. We stopped focusing so much on being seen by social media scrollers and focused on being seen by customers. My advice in this area is if you are building to be seen, educate yourself on the platform you are working in. The areas you want to focus on are the current algorithms (as these change often), the best time for posting, etc… If you are trying to build customers however, pay attention to your post showing what your business and brand stand for and represent. Be real! This is valued by people who want to spend money with you.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Repetitive consistency has helped greatly in this area. Transparency is big in this area also. We consistently provide quality products to our customers that truly get better with each launch and this is seen by our customers. So if we have any price increases, customers know why based on the end product. We are real with our customer base and remain visible through our social media Channels and email subscriber lists. We allow our customers to see who we are as a company and some of the inner workings. Customers then know we have nothing to hide and we are real people.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.rjbcollections.com
• Instagram: @rjbcollections
• Facebook: @therjbcollections
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits
Rosalyn Long (jewelry model and sister)