666: Jess & Victor Started A Jewellery Brand With $2,000 — Now It Brings In $40K A Month

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1:06Welcome to Little Empires brought to you by the team at Founder. At Founder, our mission is to support the next generation of e-com founders. So while you may know us for interviewing some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, this series is a little different. Little Empires shines a spotlight on the builders inside our own founder community, the entrepreneurs who are in the trenches, taking action, learning, and building their businesses in real time. These aren't overnight success stories. These are real journeys, real lessons, and real founders creating their own little empires one step at a time.

1:39This podcast is proudly produced by the founder team to give our students a platform to share their experiences, wins, challenges, and honest realities of building a business from the ground up. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Hello, and welcome to the Founder Little Empires podcast, where we feature different brands that are coming out of our founder community, members that are starting and scaling their e-commerce brand. Today, we have with us Jess Zeng and Victor Chan with their beautiful brand called Bylumine. It is a gorgeous jewellery brand you can check out. Jess and Victor, welcome to the podcast.

2:19Hello, thank you for having us. Hi, so you guys are based in Sydney in Australia. Really want to learn about how Bylumine came to life. So we're going to ask you a series of questions, really want to hear about where you've taken the brand to today. Yeah, great. Yeah, so if we go back a little bit, let's start from the very beginning. So before e-commerce, what was your life like? What were your work lives like? And did you have any e-commerce experience? Yeah, growing up in a traditional Asian household, I was actually told to study hard, get a degree at uni, get a good job, which was either lawyer, doctor or an accountant.

3:01And I kind of followed that traditional part to a T and became an accountant at a big four. So it was really the Asian immigrant dream, but part of me felt a little unfulfilled, though even though I love my team, I always felt like there had to be more than just doing taxes and doing crunching numbers on Excel. And at that time, I didn't know anything about business. I didn't know anyone in business, but I think there was just something at the back of my mind to do something different. Yeah, for me, I was always in the software space, and um but i always dived into like little streams of income online so i'd sell um like wall art flip camera gear on the facebook marketplace and um list like various things on ebay um about like yeah anything to help me create and sell um so i always thought about the idea of building something of like my own that was physical.

3:56And at the same time, Jess, my partner, who's also my co-founder now, also wanted to like have a change in her career. And at the time, I also wanted to make her an anniversary gift. So that's how it all started with personalised jewellery. Oh, okay, beautiful. All right. I'm keen to learn more about that because we have a lot of founders in our community. their brand is built out of solving their own problems. So I want to learn more about that. And so what pushed the two of you to actually take that leap and start the brand? It started with coming up with a gift for Jess. Tell us more about that.

4:37Yeah, so we actually didn't really intend to solve a problem at first. So it was just that Victor was exploring ideas and he bought this engraving machine off Amazon. And so he decided to engrave me a necklace of the stars of the day we met which was honestly like super romantic and I thought it was the cutest keepsake ever and I'm being a super sentimental person myself I love keeping little journals and little books and I even have all my primary school and high school books so I thought oh yeah there must be people like me who like to keep their anniversary and their special dates as little keepsakes so I went on Etsy and started researching and turns out there's a huge market for engraved necklaces so I said to Victor oh yeah why not sell this it's such a cute idea and that kind of led into like the star map necklace being our very first product.

5:19Okay and so you started with your very first product what was it called the star map necklace? Yeah star map necklace it's basically a constellation of the stars at the at the sky in a given moment so it's just like a star mapping. Okay beautiful really unique idea and like the jewellery market is relatively competitive and saturated you could argue that there's a lot happening in this space so I'd love to learn a bit more about what research you did in this space like let's talk competitors uh googling other brands like looking at what was out there how did you start that process oh yeah when we were researching we saw heaps of people selling the same thing and honestly it's a pretty double edged sword because in one hand it means that the people are interested in your product and there is demand out there but on the other hand it means that it's a very very saturated market and there's heaps of competitors and you really have to innovate to stand out and we learned that lesson quite early on because when we launched our first star map product we actually didn't get a single sale for two weeks and obviously back then we knew nothing about launch day we knew nothing about dropping teasers and priming social media but yeah we definitely learned a pretty early lesson that our products needed to stand out and over the time we worked really hard to innovate our product to include adding charms like birth flowers which are our current bestseller and birthstone charms and letter charms and overall implementing a better user experience like having a live preview so people can see what their engraving will look like.

6:51Okay all right thank you and let's get into a bit more around how you validated the product idea. So like you mentioned I think that's really interesting if we see competitors in the market we know that that validates that there is actually a type of customer that would purchase my product but then what further validation did you do to ensure that this was a viable e-commerce product that people would actually buy it that it has a point of difference like let's talk into the uniqueness of your product yeah I think it comes from us being a fully customizable product I don't think there are many competitors out there offering a fully customizable piece because it's actually really difficult when it comes to fulfillment so our customers are able to design a very unique piece from like choosing the type of chains the type of materials and the very different charms that we have so it's almost a very completely mix and match process and that opens up to like hundreds of different combinations and unique designs so it's pretty much a guarantee that no two pieces of jewelry are pretty much the same from us and so that's why I think people love us because it's not so much of a mass market piece but rather it's a hand-assembled piece made by us with lots of loves and there's definitely a lot to choose from so when we first did our research on Etsy there kind of wasn't like that a lot of things like that in the market and certainly we implemented like adding charms and then adding a live preview because I think there was something missing where there wasn't enough of the live preview and then people couldn't see what they were engraving like you just sort of kind of type it on a text box and then you just thought oh you're hopeful the best that oh this is the engraving that will come out well so we kind of thought over the time like oh yeah how is there a better way to do this and since personalization is such an emotional purchase like people should be able to see what they're creating before we buy so that's how we kind of set out to change that and at the first um yeah so in terms of like validating our product we started our um like we started our first run pretty small um i'll say in jewelry we're quite lucky um like the moqs are quite generally low uh so like the first run apart from the like the engraving machine which was our biggest cost um at the start which was like two thousand dollars um i got it off Amazon our first run of like the actual blanks to engrave on were like only a hundred dollars um and also like the packaging we did like a very scrappy first run we just um we wanted like really nice personalized boxes which we got later on but um our first time we just got like cardboard boxes and we just stuck our own logo on for like 50 dollars so pretty scrappy to get started.

9:44Now I want to dive deeper into that manufacturing process and how you got started with it. What did the first version of the product look like? So the star map necklace, what did the first version look like? I can see that you're smiling there Jess because it might have developed over time I can imagine. 100 % very different. Version one of our product was I guess a simple coin pendant with an engraveable design like a letter, handwriting, zodiac, star map. We still have this core design now, but I think over time we added a lot of charm options, including Birdstones, which is currently our bestseller, and Letter Charms to kind of allow people to build a piece that's truly unique to them.

10:24When we first started in product development, we used standards like stock manufacturing design, meaning that these designs are available from every factories, but eventually we moved to designing in-house, so we kind of have our own unique designs. And for getting the inspiration, we kind of look at how the piece is what we want to do. So we get inspiration from like mood boarding on Pinterest. And then we start doing kind of rough sketches on the iPad. And then we draw up a design in Blender, which is a 3D software tool. And then which we send our files to the manufacturers to sample the design.

11:02And then from the designs, we iterate if we need to. And yeah, it's not a perfect process because then definitely if you try to get that design right. But yeah, that's how we kind of started into getting our own unique pieces from day one. So I would say it's quite different, but the kind of core essence of the product is still there. Okay. All right. And so you moved to in-house design. So if we go back to when you first started, you got your$2 ,000 engraving machine. And then Victor, you mentioned that the first run was, was that$100 worth of blank pendants? Did you say? Yeah, yeah. So it was only like$100 worth of blank pendants for our first run.

11:44$100 worth of blank pendants and that was trialing it out by yourself and engraving them on the blank pendants? Yeah, that's correct, yeah. And then you moved to the stock designs? The stock designs were the ones that were engraveable. Right, okay. Those were the first ones that we started. All right. So can you clarify for me what that was like as in, so you got the plane pendants for$100 and then you engraved them all? Like, have you taken any engraving out of house? So you've kept all the engraving yourself? We've done all the engraving ourselves. So I had a bit of background in software. So I could kind of have that own custom tool to convert whatever like our customer wanted from a picture into like the engraving file that we needed to engrave onto the pendants.

12:43So yeah, that was like the start of the first one. Okay. All right. Thank you for clarifying. So with those first hundred pendants, how many, you might know off the top of your head, like how many did you sell until you knew that you had to order that next batch? Like how did you manage that inventory? Obviously it's like a hundred dollars is quite a cheap first batch, but how did you know that you had traction from there? Yeah. We mentioned that we took like two weeks to get our first sale. So at first, like we were like pretty gutted like oh we launched our ad and we're like why is there no sales right now oh so that was pretty devastating at the start but um yeah um as as time went on the and we improved our ads and the messaging um and we got like our first few sales that that um at that time we knew like oh okay could be something here so um that's when we looked into like ordering our next batch.

13:40Okay. All right. Cool. And the cost of each piece, those first few ones, what was the sale price of each of those first pieces? Yeah. Our first few, the sale price were, yeah,$75. Our first few. Thank you. Now I want to ask you, looking at this sourcing, manufacturing type process, obviously it's quite unique in the sense that you got the the blank pendants arrived and you did your own engraving uh did anything go wrong in the process any mistakes or challenges or any uh yeah any any pitfalls that you might have fallen into early yeah definitely there's been quite a lot uh uh our first few engravings like um like you have to be really precise with engraved jewelry as well so sometimes if that's just like a little bit misalign you end up wasting a lot of blanks as well because we can't sell that to our customers um and also um for the next few batches there were some issues with um like the jump rings on our engraved pendants were like slightly just like too small uh which made it kind of not fit onto the chains that we had um so the lesson learned here was that you just have to be really exact about like exactly what you want from your manufacturers.

15:10So even like the slightest difference can really mess you up. All right. Thank you. And I'm sure there will always be different challenges and mistakes along the way. But as long as you learn from them, like I'm sure you've learned to be a lot more precise in this process. Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. So let's get into your marketing strategy, right? We want to know more about your approach to marketing, your social media content creation uh let's talk through what was the first channel that consistently brought in sales um and why do you think it's worked for your brand yeah i think at the start we just try like pretty much everything from like meta google influences as well pinterest but the one that really worked for us at the start was um like meta ads which is facebook and Instagram um I think the reason why was that jewelry uh for us especially because it's personalized needs like um a longer kind of explanation onto why it's like why it's important for the customer buying like to really get um like we have to really run through like the emotional journey with them as well.

16:30So Meta Ads has been really good for that because it can show video compared to something like Google Ads where it's more just like product listings and you're not really unique compared to other competitors in the space. One other thing good about Meta is that like you can start at a small budget and like scale your way as you grow. Yeah, of course. And experimenting with different types of ads, different ad creatives. I want to ask you, how did you get started with MetaRights? It can be quite an intimidating idea of how to actually set up your account and get started and test that budget. How did you start?

17:12Yeah, yeah. At the start, I didn't really know what we were doing. But yeah, we did learn a few things off YouTube and also through the Founder Plus program as well, which really taught us how to set up the right ad campaign structures, what type of ads to make and what kind of budget to allocate on them as well. Okay. All right. So a combination of doing your own research and then leveraging the support in the founder, the founder membership as well. How did you go about with testing different ad creatives and experimenting there and creating the content, first of all? Oh yeah. So yeah, like at the start as well, like we just didn't really, like we have no background in marketing both of us.

18:07So at the start, it was quite like a struggle. Like if you could see our first ads, it was really scrappy. Like it was like all the lighting is wrong and the messaging is like really, really wrong. Um, but yeah, uh, as we like tested more and more, um, we got like better feedback over time and we really refined like who we were trying to target and, um, what message we really wanted to, um, portray out there, um, to make better ads. Yeah. Yeah, of course. And you're constantly learning and evolving and testing different things, testing different hooks, different angles, different CTAs, like seeing what works.

18:50It's really important to keep evolving and experimenting with your ads. Yeah, I want to learn a bit more about socials as well. So organic social, have you engaged with influencers, user-generated content? Like tell us a bit more about what you do there. Yeah, well, we mostly primarily focus on meta ads and not so much our organic but we definitely do have like email marketing and we've tried UGC and influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is kind of something we've struggled with so even though we've gifted a lot of products to influencers in the past we kind of haven't quite seen the return on investment and conversion so yeah something that we'll probably try again once we're in a bigger stage in the business but yeah it's something that kind of hasn't worked well for us at this stage.

19:40Okay, fair enough. And the Meta Ads has been your main channel, right? So you're sticking to it? Yeah, 100 % has been our main channel, yeah. And then we do have a little Google Ads on the side, but yeah, primarily Meta Ads. Okay, awesome. So you started with a$2 ,000 engraving machine and$100 worth of blank pendants. Let's go to where you're at today in terms of your sales? Like I know the business has grown so much. So I'm really keen to hear where are you, where are you at today? How is the brand, how is the brand going? Yeah. So we've grown 10X from last year. Now we consistently do like 30 to 40K months with goals of 50K soon.

20:24And actually it's allowed me to quit my full-time job and go all in on business, which is honestly like so wonderful. And I'm like so grateful for the opportunity. I think business has really changed me as a person. You definitely learn so much about yourselves and learn how to handle problems and conflicts. And honestly, if there's anything I take out of it, it's like I wish I actually started a bit earlier. Oh, this is awesome. This is so cool. So let's go back to when you first started by Lamin. Like what date did you guys launch? I think we launched around mid-June 2024. And then two weeks later, we got our very first sale.

21:00And so it's almost been coming up to two years again. So it's been a bit of a journey. Yeah, we're both working basically part-time along with our jewellery. So then we have our day jobs during the day. And then every time after work, we'll just kind of rush on, jump on the computer and start like doing ads, doing creatives. And that's all our weekend's gone. So yeah, it was quite a bit of a hustle and journey at the start. Yeah, I can imagine. And really, really sticking at the type of business and brand that you're looking to build. but also handling that transition from working full-time. And then now, Jess, you're at the point where you've quit your full-time job and you are all in on Vilemin.

21:39So$30 ,000 to$40 ,000 a month, has that been quite consistent recently? Like how has that been over the past, say, 6 to 12 months? Yeah, it's definitely been a pickup from like the Black Fridays, which is a huge gifting period for us, like December and November. and then we did see a slight dip in that kind of January when it's like a bit of a low season but then things are starting to ramp up again for our Mother Day campaign which should be quite big for us because a lot of we found that a lot of moms really love our products because they can add like birthstones to represent their kids and they can add letters to represent their child and one of our actually most popular engraving is actually putting your newborn baby's birth weight birthday day and time of birth onto the pendant.

22:27So yeah, it's been quite consistent. Yeah, that's really beautiful. It's such a considered gift idea. And I feel like people nowadays are really looking for something personalized and a point of difference that's not like a mass produced piece of jewelry, more of a keepsake that's had a fair bit of thought put into it. And you mentioned that you've got functionality on your website so that we can input the text, uh the text or the gemstone and see what it looks like on screen yeah yeah so um uh the yeah when we started looking at well when I started looking at like uh that first anniversary gift for Jess um like I was trying to buy one myself online um but I couldn't really find one where like I could see like what I was actually like getting at the end of the day I was like Like surely there has to be a better way to like show this or purchase this.

23:27So yeah, that's what we built to kind of differentiate ourselves. Like I feel like personalized jewelry is such a personal thing that like people want to kind of check exactly like how they want it. So that's like one of our main selling points, like being able to really tell like what you're getting. Absolutely. And a keepsake is so important that it is accurate. Like you want to give when they're buying, when your customers are buying something that is so important to them to perhaps gift to a loved one and it's got specific details like a birth date or an anniversary date or what have you, you need to give them that full confidence that it's going to appear exactly how it is visualized on site, right?

24:13Like it has to be so specific. If you were buying a navy shirt, right, and it is like the tiniest, slightly bit lighter once it arrives, that's probably okay, right? But with this, it is very precise work because it's such a personalized and tailored product. Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine that having that visualization on your website would give the customers a lot more trust and also help with your conversions. Like, did you notice that once you added that feature, it assisted with converting browsers on your store? We had that feature quite early on. I'm not too sure, like, if it did or not.

24:54But, like, it's definitely, like, been, like, a better user experience for our customers. We definitely get a lot of good feedback on how easy the live preview is to use. so a lot of people are really uncertain about like other brands where you just kind of input the text and just kind of hope for the best but so we've been getting a lot of good feedback that oh it's really easy to use like I can scale up my design or scale down my design as you want so then people can see like oh it looks like this and then that's how they visualize a lot better so yeah of course it's really powerful in giving them that confidence when they're when they're purchasing on your website.

25:34All right. Now, I would love to learn a bit more about your involvement in the founder courses. And also, you've been a member of our e-commerce coaching program. So, our one-on-one coaching program. Tell us a bit about how that's impacted your journey. Oh, yeah. The founder courses have definitely helped us tremendously. We were actually going through a rough time in the business and we weren't actually sure if the business was going to work out at all. Our sales were super slow. And then we saw an offer for a$1 course. And so we thought, why not? It's only a$1 investment. And that turned out to be the best decision ever.

26:09Through that, we were able to kind of access so many of the useful founder courses, which we learned so much more about the marketing, the target audiences, giveaways, running ads, and sending emails, like literally nothing that we knew how to do. And then we wanted to invest a bit more into our learning. So we kind of joined the coaching program and that kind of gave us like access to our coaches which are still our mentors to this day thanks Jackie and Tess so yeah it's been life-changing business changing and yeah it's honestly helped us grow and become better business owners and become a better person and I think that business can be really isolating sometimes so it's definitely wonderful to have someone who has done it before and kind of walk the same path of uncertainty as you have so any questions you can always reach out to them.

26:53So yeah, it's been really wonderful. That's the best. And how about yourself, Victor? What would you say has been the most impactful thing of having mentors that are e-commerce founders to rely on? Yeah, similar to what I just said as well. I think the biggest thing was just seeing someone who's walked the path before do it. It gives us so much confidence that even on the days that maybe there's nothing's working out and your sales are really low, A big issue for us was like we started our business when there was the U.S. tariffs and that hit us pretty hard as most of our sales come from the U.S.

27:35So just having like someone there to guide through the whole process and really show like the path is, yeah, that was like the biggest game changer. Yeah, absolutely. And having that reassurance and guidance from someone who's really got their finger on the pulse of what's happening in the space, what's happening in the industry and staying in touch with all these changes, right? Now, I'd love to learn a bit more about where you guys are at now in terms of how this has transformed your life. Like you took the leap into starting an e-commerce brand. You started it while you were still working. And now, Jess, you've quit your job.

28:19Like this is crazy, right? Like you've actually$30 ,000 to$40 ,000 in sales each month has allowed you that freedom to leave your job and focus on Buy Lumin. What else has really changed in your life in terms of where you're at now? Yeah, I think we've definitely learned so much about ourselves and kind of how we handle conflict and like handle problems. And yeah, it's definitely been changing in so many ways where you just learn how to solve problems, like understand the market. And there's just so much to learn in business. I feel like I don't feel like I'm like, no, a bit like 1 % of what's out there.

29:01so it's been such a great learning opportunity and it's been so wonderful that I've been able to go full-time and be able to do this and not have to worry so much about a job at the same time so yeah it's great. And how about yourself Victor financially, mentally, work-wise what's been the biggest transformation for you? Yeah yeah for me definitely like every day like waking up to are working on our own business is like so fulfilling. I feel like there's like a challenge like every day and just keeps us sharp, keeps us constantly learning. And I think that is like the biggest transformation, just having that.

29:44Definitely like had so much personal growth, just starting business. Absolutely. And evolving as an individual, think of the skill set, the adaptability, the problem solving skills, like you mentioned, Jess, like, yes, this has made an impact to your lifestyle, your financial state, but then also your, your ability to just expand yourself as an individual and develop and grow. I think it's fantastic. Uh, and that leads me to a lovely reflection for us to wrap up with. I want to ask you, so by the mean has been around for two years, right? So June 2024 to today.

30:25I'll go to you, Jess, first. If the Jess from two years ago saw where you're at with the brand now, what would she say? If the before me could see, they'll definitely be so proud because I stuck it out and I didn't quit during the tough times. I think, yeah, there was a lot of times in business where it felt really hard, nothing was working, and we're doing a lot of things, but just there were no results. So I felt like I really wanted to give up and quit. So I didn't quit though. And I think that business isn't an easy path, but it's really fulfilling. And to anyone who's listening who wants to get started, just do it.

31:00And I think just get the reps in as well in business. You do a lot of boring and unglamorous things, but I think the more you do them, the better you get. And I think consistency is the key. And I know this is completely cliched, but I think it's a marathon, not a sprint. So yeah, the old me would be really, really proud that I stuck it through and just kept running this race. Yes, yes, absolutely. And that perseverance and that relentlessness and knowing that there will be challenges, ups and downs, you will be tested, but you've overcome these little speed humps as you go and then look at where the brand is now.

31:37And so, Victor, how about yourself? If you look back to Victor two years ago, what have you learned? Like, what would he say? I think my answer would be pretty similar to Jess as well. Like, I'll be pretty proud of what we've achieved so far. But I still know that there's probably more to achieve in our brand. And yeah, really excited for what's next as well. Absolutely. And where is Bylamine headed? What's the plan? Like, where are we taking the brand? So yeah, in the short term for this year, we are focusing on our Mother Day campaign, which is coming up soon. And then we also want to run our very first pop-up and pop-up store to kind of really connect with our customers and see how many other products that we can offer them.

32:22So we're sort of planning that out this year and hopefully before Christmas in the peak gifting season. And then eventually in the long, long term, we definitely do probably want to have a store front of our own, a permanent storefront. And so we'll be able to showcase our jewellery more because I think it's such a visual product. So I think it'll benefit from people being able to touch it and feel it and put it on. So I think that's what we want to do in the future. Yeah, big things in store for Bailamine. And absolutely what you say around having a pop-up, it can be a great opportunity for awareness and publicity, great social media content, but also can get you really in touch with your customers and your community.