The concept of making a living by selling something that you have designed and made yourself is a very appealing one, and I am aiming to do exactly that.
I have spent the past two years developing a new jewellery concept, keep me jewellery, and I am now aiming to get the product into the public eye and start taking orders. The concept for keep me is a series of 10 collectable animals. Each animal has a unique collar which, when removed, is a wearable sterling silver ring – perfect for gifting and collecting.
I have no previous experience in this area and the learning curve is very steep, but I believe in my product and the more I learn the more exciting the whole process is becoming. The aim of this blog is for me to document the highs and lows of the process.
My previous professional experience has been working on feature films and commercials as an animatronic designer, which involves a lot of mechanical designing and engineering. I have also worked as a sculptor and, more recently, as a 3D artist. These jobs require an in-depth knowledge of materials and building processes and that has enabled me to continue developing. This has been crucial and keeps costs down enormously as I have not needed to pay designers or technicians.
I work on a freelance basis, which has given me the flexibility to take work when I need to generate funds, and most importantly, to take the time needed to develop a product by myself.
Over the coming weeks I will write about various key stages of my experience so far. I have had to learn many new processes and theories very quickly as well as learning a lot about myself. A few things that I read about entrepreneurship when I started this process made no sense to me at the time, but now make perfect sense – I will explain this in detail as the weeks go on. I will also be documenting what is happening with the marketing progress of keep me.
I recently built an online store for the product and have signed up to social media platforms to introduce the product range more personally. My current strategy is to build interest online, through social media and blogs, and hopefully this will then lead to sales. At the time of writing I believe I have 101 likes on Facebook and 16 followers on Twitter – not bad for the first couple of weeks, although I am pretty sure 100 of those likes are acquaintances of mine in some way...
Tom Blake is a sculptor and designer and the founder of keep me jewellery. He'll be blogging on a regular basis about his startup journey on the Network.
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