We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Susan Beaver. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Susan below.
Susan, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
I had started a small handmade jewelry business, called Chain Effects Handcrafted Jewelry. It had begun with a jewelry making class, where I learned wire-wrapping, a technique where the chain is handmade. I became somewhat addicted to making jewelry because there were an infinite number of beads and combinations and I wanted to try them all. I made so much jewelry that I realized I needed to start selling some, so that business was a chain effect, so to speak, resulting from my passion hobby.
In Chain Effects I do custom design and I was approached by my brother, who was planning a client workshop. He was looking for a small gift, or as he described it, “a blessing” to give each participant and wanted to discuss jewelry ideas. I had been experimenting with hand rolled paper beads using colorful paper in my jewelry business, so inscribing messages or “blessings” on slips of paper and rolling them into beads evolved from that. My husband helped with the name during a brainstorming session, when I was describing the idea to him. The name Blessing Beads came up and I liked it so much that I immediately bought the domain, Blessing-Beads.com. It felt like there were many possibilities for these very unique, inscribed paper scroll beads and I believed it had the potential to become a niche market of its own.
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 creator and entrepreneur at heart. I have fun creating so many things! Jewelry, crafts, gardens – I love bringing ideas to life. I developed and currently run several small businesses, including Blessing Beads Jewelry, featuring handcrafted paper scroll beads, each inscribed with a blessing, message or affirmation.
I am a strong believer in the concept of energy following thought, and that you create what you focus on. So, the idea of having a piece of jewelry that could be used to bring awareness to an affirmation or blessing was very exciting for me.
The concept of Blessing Beads is that we have within us the potential and ability to create a fulfilling, authentic life. Affirming the good in our lives, with gratitude and awareness, is an important step in attracting more blessings. Blessing Beads jewelry was created specifically for the purpose of wearing our affirmations on “our sleeve,” so to speak. Blessing Beads serve as a gentle reminder throughout our day to keep our thoughts, energy and lives as positive and affirming as possible.
The beads themselves have evolved in concept. The original plan was to have all of them printed with a number, or “coded” so the messages could be private, known only to the person buying or wearing the jewelry. As I started making them, I got a lot of feedback suggesting that words (or affirmations) printed on the beads was preferred, so I moved my focus in that direction. I later added symbols, in part because I liked the way they looked, and those are the ones I wear the most. The equal sign was one of the first symbols since it was a great complement to the “equality” blessing bead. I do still make coded beads, and 333 has been one of the bestselling beads.
I now have 19 symbol beads, 24 affirmation beads and 59 coded Blessing Beads. Because it can be hard for customers to choose between so many options, my primary designs are interchangeable bracelets or chokers so the bead can be changed inexpensively.
As a creator first and foremost, I recently added Bundled Blessings to my store, which are curated gift bundles including Blessing Beads jewelry, some of my handcrafted jewelry, my photography and other complementary items each geared to a theme. The Bundles are another outlet to express my creativity and play with my art.
My goal is to convey the message that appreciation is a catalyst for more things to appreciate. Appreciation for the simplest things that are already present in our lives is an example I can set. We are all surrounded by blessings, if only we are able to bring awareness to them.
The thing I’m most proud of is feedback received from customers and followers that some of my messaging has inspired them to pursue their dreams. My hope is that I can inspire more dreams and fulfill the Blessing Beads mission to bring positive energy to the world, one bead at a time.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
All of my products are intentionally handmade, which is a rare thing in the US retail market. Producing my own product lets me run with any idea I have, when I have it, rather than spending time searching for manufacturing partners or retooling.
Producing it myself also allows me to make each piece to order, which saves money, since all of my components are used interchangeably. I don’t need to guess which options will sell and stock inventory minimums, like I would if manufacturing was outsourced. Since it’s all done in-house, I can switch gears whenever I want without worrying about having unsold product sitting on a shelf resulting from manufacturing minimums.
The product has evolved a lot over the years from the early prototypes. It’s quite a journey to take an idea and transform it into a sellable product. Making Blessing Beads jewelry has two facets – the artistic/message part of the beads and the actual making of the jewelry.
Once I had developed the concept and the inscriptions, it was time to actually make the product. I spent a lot of time researching components to find parts that worked together, and testing adhesives. I needed cord for the jewelry, and ends to attach the hardware to the cord, finish pieces for the paper beads, and clasps and chains. It was a whirlwind of buying samples of almost every type of endcap and finish bead on the market to see how they all worked together in form, function and aesthetics.
While there are a lot of components, most can be sourced pretty simply, so good assembly processes are the most important aspect of production. I started rolling the beads on whatever cylindrical shapes I could find, but soon learned that I needed to find tubes in specific & uniform sizes. I still occasionally use different sizes for some of the designs but have decided to focus on a couple specific sizes to minimize the materials I have to stock, which has kept costs down.
There’s a lot of time to ponder ways of improving manufacturing while hand rolling the beads. With time and experience, I developed a lot of ways to improve the quality of the product, so while each is uniquely handmade, they are as standardized as possible. Early on it was all about figuring out how to do things, but later it becomes more about the best way to refine processes.
The three biggest lessons I learned were one, that choosing more expensive components is worth it, if it saves assembly time, because labor is the biggest cost of my production. The second thing I learned was to choose and stock components that are readily available so that I don’t have to change my entire product line if a key component is discontinued. The third thing I learned was to focus on a few simple designs to minimize the expense of keeping inventory for several different design options, like I did in the beginning. I felt like I had to make and sell every idea that popped into my head, and there were many. Scaling back my product line also helped me to simplify the website, since I originally had so many design options and combinations that it was a bit overwhelming. A couple of years ago when I redesigned my website, I made the decision to produce and sell fewer products.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Building my audience for Blessing Beads, and a couple of other small businesses, is a continual work in progress. I took a bit of a unique approach to building my audience. When I started, I didn’t want to bombard my feed with promoting products because I felt I needed to get more followers first, so I started posting about anything that interested me, particularly content that I liked to follow.
I’m fortunate to live in a town on the shores of Lake Michigan, and we have a secluded cabin up north on Lake Michigan, so I started posting lots of photos of beaches, sunsets and bonfires, which were pretty popular. I also tried to focus on any special moments or events, like great food and drink, gardening, trips, travel and almost anything that was fun or satisfying to me. I also post a lot of inspirational quotes, since my Blessing Beads were created to inspire, and help focus on all of life’s blessings, to amplify the best things in life. Those types of posts resonate with my brand’s target market. Posting on lots of topics helped diversify my audience and gain more followers than if I had only posted product photos alone.
The thing I’m finding now on Instagram is that reels are my most successful posts, so I try to create as many of those as I can find time to make. To someone starting out, I would suggest experimenting with your posts. For example, once I posted the same exact video footage, one right after the other. One had the natural sound of the waves in the background and the other had a song. The one with the sound of waves only received 17 likes, while the one with music had 776 likes. Take some time to figure out the algorithms and what works.
I would also suggest possibly starting your Instagram account as either a personal or as a creative account, rather than a professional account, unless people actually shop on your Instagram, because you will have access to more music if your account is something other than professional. But most of all I would say to have some fun with it and get the creative juices flowing. Passion will improve the quality of your posts.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.blessing-beads.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blessing_beads/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlessingBeadsJewelry
- Other: My other small business websites: https://chain-effects.com/ https://bundled-blessings.com/ https://papermaking101.com/