We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tasi LeDonne a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tasi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Creating the name of my company, was quite a challenging but exciting experience. I wanted to choose a name that represented myself and my brand accurately. Originally, I was considering naming my company “Tasi” after my name which means ocean, but it just didn’t feel right. So I went back to the drawing board and tried to think of people, places, or words that reminded me of the ocean. Then it finally dawned upon me the perfect name from my company, Sirena. Since I am both Chamorro (Guamanian) and Mexican, Sirena was the perfect tie between my two cultures and my love and passion for the ocean. In Spanish, Sirena means mermaid and in Chamorro, Sirena is tale about a woman who loved the ocean so much, she was turned into a mermaid. I feel strongly connected to the ocean and felt the name, Sirena was a perfect match symbolically and literally.

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?

Hello, my name is Tasi LeDonne and I was born in Guam and raised in San Diego, Ca. From the moment I was born, I spent most, if not all my days near the ocean or on the beach. Being in the ocean, became theraputic to myself as it provided me a sense of serenity and peace. Throughout my younger years, I greatly appreciated the ocean but wasn’t too sure how I wanted to give back to the ocean. Sirena, was first created when I graduated from high school in 2015. My initial intention of creating this company was to have a source of income while always giving people pieces of the ocean as gifts.

When I left to college in 2015, I decided to get my degree in aquatic biology. Leaving to college really helped me bring more purpose to my company than just selling goods from the sea. I am grateful to have chosen this degree because not only did I learn about the impacts we as humans have on our ocean, I also learned the importance of educating others about the ocean. It became apparent to me that many people have never even been to the beach or had fears of the ocean because it is so unexplored. This is when I decided I wanted to change the dynamic of my company. Of course, I was still creating seashell and seaglass jewlery, along with driftwood home decor pieces, but now I started using my platform to educate as well. Now, I have incorporated, Trivia Tuesday which highlights different ocean animals or topics. I wanted to help educate others about our oceans and animals within them to hopefully inspire others to care about the ocean as much as I do.

Now Sirena, is a company that creates beautiful jewelry and home decor while also educating the public about our oceans. One thing I am very proud about, is that all the seaglass, seashells, and driftwood I use for my products are all collected by me. Every piece is unique in its own way because it is collected from various beaches from San Diego to Huatuclo to Australia. No piece collected is the same and I love the character it gives to my products.

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

I am happy to say I manufacture my own products. There was a big learning curve because I had no idea how to make anything that I create now. Luckily, with Google I looked up “How to wire wrap jewelry” and “What do I need to make jewelry.” Once I got the products to make jewelry, there were a lot of trial and error days. After some practice, I got the basics down and finally created my first pieces. Once I got the hang of doing basic wire wrapping, I decided to get more creative and figure out how to start making home decor. My dad taught me how to use power tools and it was a fun experience! Now, I try to learn new techniques for wire wrapping and expanding my jewelry to include earrings, necklaces, rings, and bracelets. Everyday is a chance to learn something new and I am glad I can use my products as my own experiments.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

It was quite difficult to build an audience on social media and it is still something I struggle with. I think what works best for me is just being myself and being personable. I think what really helped build my social media presence was surprisngly selling at different events or markets. Many people really enjoyed my products and loved what I did with my company such a Trivia Tuesday and so they wanted to follow me on social media to keep up with everything I was doing and products being released. The biggest piece of advice I have is to consistently be active on your social media platforms. It’s unfortuante because now a days in order to be noticed you have to always have content coming out. This is something I strongly struggle with but know it’s imperative to keep your social media audience engaged.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sirena.us/
• Instagram: sirena.ca
• Facebook: sirena.ca