Craft Show Success Spawns Jewelry E-Business

After losing her position at a major telecommunications firm about seven years ago, Shirley Gordon turned to her hobby of making jewelry to help make ends meet.

For years, she would come home and begin stringing beads together to alleviate stress. Eventually, she made so much jewelry she didn’t know what to do with it. She then began selling pieces at local craft fairs and home parties to raise money for more materials.

The shows were a success, often resulting in requests for custom orders. But she realized she would have to upgrade her displays in order to compete effectively with other artisans who did crafts shows professionally near her Marlton, NJ home and studio.

That — coupled with the difficulties she was having in finding a new job — led her to start GemstoneGifts.com, which offers hundreds of necklaces, gemstone bracelets, watches, bookmarks and other beaded products, says Gordon.

Gordon markets Gemstonegifts.com via online search, using keywords that describe her products such as “black onyx necklace” or “blue agate beaded earrings”

“They are not highly competitive words, and they are all two and three word phrases. I think that might be why it works for me,” Gordon says, noting that search engines are both highly competitive and fickle. She recommends that anybody thinking of embarking on SEM first read a book before they get started.

Locally, Gordon is also thinking of launching a print campaign that she hopes would spark dialogue with customers and prospects and maybe generate a custom order or two.

She’s also working on a pay-per-click advertising program that should launch soon.

“In my opinion, it is dangerous to depend only on search engine natural traffic for 100% of your visitors,” she says. “You could be number one today and gone from the listing tomorrow, and that has happened to me several times over the last few months.”

Gordon hopes to have her revenue come evenly from three different sources: natural search engine traffic, pay per click and print advertising. “I believe it’s called ‘not putting all your eggs in one basket,'” she says.

The business has lined up several thousand customers, many of whom have become regulars and order every holiday season, says Gordon, who estimates that 40% of her business now comes from custom orders, where people call in and e-mail her what they’re looking for. She makes the item, e-mails the customer a picture, makes any requested adjustments and she makes a sale.

As for the future, Gordon is happy with the status quo.

“Honestly, I am not sure how big I want to be,” she says. “I really don’t what to lose the ‘home grown’ flavor. I know that it is the goal of a lot of jewelry designers to have their product in department stores but I don’t think I want that for myself.”