Notes from Chris

Episode 1254

Lindsay Ann Gottschall and Courtney Joy Bleier are sisters from New York They grew up in an artistic household and both went on to creative careers. Courtney combined her love of design and teaching to become an art teacher, while Lindsay pursued her dream of acting.

While pursuing that dream, Lindsay also began making beaded jewelry on the side. It quickly became a passion as she began experimenting with different materials and techniques. Over time she learned to make resin, a hard epoxy substance that’s mixed into a range of different colors and patterns. In 2009 both sisters found themselves living in Miami, and they started spending time together making jewelry. They got to talking, brainstorming and throwing ideas around. They wanted to come up with some unique designs, something that used their own lives and environment as inspiration for a new type of product.

What they got from all that brainstorming was anything but garden variety. Their concept was to make flower resin jewelry. They’d take dried flowers and intricately place them inside a mold, petal by petal, before adding the resin. This gave the flowers a frozen look, as if they were trapped in time.

The sisters loved what they’d come up with so much that they decided then and there to launch an Etsy store selling the pieces. They’d sell under their own label called Ann + Joy: a name brought about by combining both their middle names.

In the first three months, Ann + Joy received over one hundred orders and more than three thousand dollars in revenue. All of that came from spending only two hundred dollars on materials—although to be fair, they did have a lot of the equipment already. By the end of their first year, they had sold over twenty-three hundred orders, resulting in more than sixty-five thousand dollars in revenue. The two sisters and Etsy had a budding romance.

The next part wasn’t as exciting. As the popularity of their store increased, copycat sellers noticed, and they began flooding the Etsy market with similar products.

But that just meant Lindsay and Courtney had to adapt—both with their product, and their marketing.

These adaptations helped get them through their second full year and to the point of Lindsay being able to go full time on the business.

In present times, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on Ann + Joy as well and sales in Spring 2020 were drastically down. They put this down to the uncertainty of the situation, and sales began to increase again just as I was recording this story.

Hopefully, that upward trend will continue, allowing Courtney to join her sister in going all-in as they continue to innovate.

 

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  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Check out Courtney and Lindsay's beautiful jewelry at their Etsy store, Ann + Joy.
• Start selling your own creations on Etsy.

SEE ALSO:

• Fire in the Hole! Handcrafted Drumsticks Ignite Into Profits: A woman creates an Etsy store to market her wood-burned artistry wares, specializing in custom, handcrafted drumsticks.
• Trader Joe’s Sign Artist Earns $43,200 Selling Tea-Stained Prints: Discovering the art of tea-stained prints using publicly available (and free!) art, a Trader Joe’s employee begins earning $3,600 a month selling custom prints online.
• Nashville Paint-by-Numbers Kits Become Etsy Bestsellers: A visual arts teacher creates “paint by numbers” kits to help others experience joy through painting.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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