The Secret's Out!
Beading Help Web Interviews Rena Klingenberg
I had the pleasure of visiting with Rena Klingenberg, jewelry artist and author, to talk about her super successful web site, her new eBook, and jewelry making in general. Rena's can-do-it attitude is contagious and shows through in her writing and outlook on life...she's a joy to talk to, and an inspiration to any jewelry artist wants to expand their business!
Beading Help Web: Rena, your Home Jewelry Business Success Tips web site is extremely comprehensive and it's constantly referred to by jewelry artists was a great resource for running a jewelry business. What's the story behind the site?
Rena: I'm a single mom with a son who has serious asthma and allergies, and it would be hard to find an employer who would be flexible when I need time off to care for him. That was one of the reasons I really got into selling my handcrafted jewelry — so I could make a living from home in a flexible way.
While I did well with my handcrafted jewelry business, I discovered it was difficult to have strict business commitments (filling jewelry orders, doing art shows, home parties, etc.,) when my son was ill and I needed to be with him around the clock.
In 2004, I decided I needed to find an even more flexible second income that would let me scale back my jewelry business until my son was older. I came across the concept of creating information web sites on specific topics, and found it was a good fit with my skills and interests. I decided to use my varied jewelry business background to provide information that would help other jewelry artists market their work successfully.
That inspiration turned into my Home Jewelry Business Success Tips web site, which now has over 400 jewelry business articles, a once-twice monthly email newsletter, and more. I've been amazed and grateful with the fantastic response I've had from jewelry artists, and I have some exiting new plans for expanding it over the next few years!
On a side note, I'm happy to report that as my son grows, his asthma and allergies are becoming much more manageable.
BHW: You've had great success with your first eBook, Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth, and your second book, Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service, was released July 2007. Tell me about the new book, and about eBooks in general.
Rena: Well, first of all, an eBook is a neat way to receive information. It's a book that's in the form of a computer file. After purchasing the book, you receive a download link that you click on, and the book immediately pops up on your computer screen in PDF file format. You can read it on your computer screen, save it to your hard drive, or print it out and put it in a binder, etc.
Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service is the guide to a new was of selling jewelry products and services. I stumbled on this approach for selling my jewelry a few years ago, and it's the main way I operate my own jewelry business now. The business model has two facets:
1. A personal jewelry shopping service, working individually with regular clients, providing personal assistance and customized products and services
2. A jewelry gift service. Many people and businesses need to give nice gifts, but don't have the know how or the time to shop. There's a HUGE market of individuals and businesses who are thrilled and relieved to discover you can solve their gift-giving problems very easily with your jewelry gift service!
No matter where you live, there are truly infinite opportunities to sell your jewelry directly to customers in these two ways. In Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service, I give tons of ideas and examples of products, services, market niches, and marketing methods that work well. I'm really excited about the possibilities for my readers who take this information and apply it to their own jewelry business! They'll see a big new world of flexible ways to sell their jewelry products and services, without a middleman taking a cut of their profits.
BHW: Tell me how you got started making jewelry and getting started in selling it.
Rena: I have always loved earrings, and I used to buy handcrafted earrings everywhere I went. I spent most of the first half of my life in the American Southwest, so I accumulated a lot of wonderful Navajo and Hopi earrings. It had never occurred to me that I could make my own earrings — I thought jewelry making was a mysterious and gifted process that was for other people to do. But one year I received a book for my birthday called something like Make Your Own Earrings and it hit me like a bolt of lightening that I could actually do just that!
Once I made my first pair of earrings, I was obsessed and there was no turning back! Hundreds of pairs of earrings later, I realized I was going to have to start selling them or stop making them. A friend talked me into having a $10 table at her church Christmas craft fair, and I was so nervous about it that I was almost sick the morning of the fair. I didn't think to use any jewelry displays, table cover or anything else, so I just spread out a hundred or so pairs of earrings in plastic bags on my bare tabletop. I made about $175 that day, and had an exhilarating sense of "I can do this!"
BHW: What do you enjoy most about your jewelry business? Least?
Rena: What I enjoy most is having complete creative freedom about every single aspect of my jewelry business. From the components and techniques I use, to the pieces I create, packaging, where and how I market my work — everything is completely whatever I decide to do. Creativity has always been a major force in my life, and I work best when I can just let it flow and guide everything.
What I enjoy the least is dealing with taxes! Not just writing the checks to pay them, but the drudgery of record-keeping and filling out forms on a regular basis.
BHW: Rena, I've looked at the jewelry on your site, and you have some really exquisite wrapped pieces. What's your favorite technique or style in jewelry making?
Rena: Thank you! Well, I love working with wire because of the great fluid lines you can create with it — it enables you to design very emotional pieces and you can create some impossible settings using only your hands and a few tools.
BHW: What jewelry artists have influenced or impressed you?
Rena: Gretta Van Someren, Robyn Harton, Aislyn, and Eni Oken come to mind. I am impressed by not only their jewelry, but the way they run their business as well.
BHW: You can only wear one piece of jewelry for the next year. What would it be and why?
Rena: I'd start with my well-worn black leather choker-length cord with a silver clasp, which I already wear almost every day. For a pendant, I'd probably add my small free-form turquoise wrapped in silver wire because it goes with nearly everything in my closet.
BHW: Okay, I have to ask this one! You're stranded on a desert island for one year. Who would you like to be stranded with? Oh, and you can bring five tools, five types of supplies, and one book. What would you choose?
Rena: Tools: An awl for poling holes in the shells I'd find on the beach; a good pair of wire cutters; a chain nose pliers, round nose pliers, and flat nose pliers. Of course, they would all be Lindstroms! Supplies would include: Argentium wire (won't tarnish so quickly in the sea air), hundreds of yards of leather cord (for jewelry making as well as lashing together the branches I'd use to build my hut), hundreds of pairs of Argentium earwires (which could also be used to catch fish), hemp cord (for making bracelets and a sleeping hammock) and an assortment of gems (for wire wrapping or trade for supplies if I found anyone else on the island).
One book would have to be a dictionary, because actually they are quite fascinating to read, and a big unabridged edition could probably last me a year.
As far as who to have on the island with me — my mom and my son. We have great adventures no matter where we go, and I wouldn't want them to miss this one!
