It’s not unusual for jewelry designer Kate Kim’s pieces to bring
customers to tears. Since 2013, she has been selling custom,
hyperpersonal accessories through her Etsy shop, Caitlyn Minimalist:
necklaces featuring the handwriting of a relative who passed, rings with
newborn babies’ fingerprints, friendship bracelets with secret messages
— the kind of stuff you buy to commemorate a special person or occasion
and then buy again when you have something else to celebrate. Kim
estimates her returning-customer rate is about 40 percent, and she sees
between 60 and 100 percent overall growth year over year. This spring,
the brand reached 1 million sales — a rare achievement for any seller.
Here, she and her husband, Michael, who quit his job to help her full
time, walk us through how they reached such a huge milestone.To get more
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Kate Kim: My family has always been involved in jewelry. We moved from
Vietnam to America in 2012, and our first workshop was in Little Saigon
in Orange County, California, where we live. Sometimes, I would create
something personal for myself. In 2013, a friend asked me to make
something for her that was similar to a piece I’d created with my
grandfather’s handwriting. She wanted her late father’s handwriting of
the word love replicated for a necklace. I did it for free; the amount
of joy and comfort that it gave her was priceless. After that, more of
my friends started asking me for custom jewelry. I went online and saw
that there are not many options out there, like literally nobody sold
handwriting necklaces, and custom jewelry is very expensive. One seller I
admired back then was offering one for around $300. So that’s when I
decided to start my business. I realized, I can make something out of
this. I can make affordable and meaningful jewelry that everybody can
enjoy.
Custom and personalized items are really a thing on Etsy, so I thought
it was the best fit for me. The jewelry that I create has a story behind
it, so my relationship with my customers is very important. Back then,
Etsy was probably the only platform that offered that connection. Also I
wasn’t very tech-savvy in 2013, and Etsy is user-friendly.
My first shop was called Silver Handwriting, and it was solely focused
on handwriting jewelry. I don’t think I took very good photos, but even
with my bad job of branding, the demand was still there. With the amount
of people coming to me to share their stories, I thought, I can do
better than this. So I rebranded to Caitlyn Minimalist in 2014 and got a
professional camera. My sister Vivian then took over Silver Handwriting
and still runs it today. My husband, Michael, quit his job and started
working with me full time.
On balancing work and family:
Michael Kim: For the first two years, it was mostly me and Kate doing
all of the front-end stuff. Juggling family and work life has been a
pretty big challenge. We’ve had three kids since we launched. When we
had our first son, in 2015, he was born a few days before Black Friday.
Kate was having contractions, but she was determined to keep packing her
jewelry. We were frantically trying to get everything to the post
office before we headed to the hospital. It was pretty crazy. Since
then, we’ve had two more kids, but we’ve had a lot more help along the
way.
What they’ve learned:
Kate: The biggest lesson: Know how to delegate. Like Michael said, we
used to do everything by ourselves. My mom and dad watched the kids and
packed jewelry. At first, I would model, and my sister would be the hand
model and my mom would be the photographer. Michael’s sister helped us
with customer service. Literally everybody in the family is involved in
this business. But we needed help.
Michael: It got to the point where we were like, Okay, I think it’s time
that we actually start hiring people, and really trusting the
procedures that we’ve implemented. We hired our first employee in 2016 —
a college student who helped with customer service. She’s now our
office manager. We outgrew working from our home workshop back in late
2017 and had to get an office. Today we have about 30 employees total
and are about to move into an even bigger office in September.
The Wall