Welcome and Welcome Back! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Posted by James Rich on
It's been a long time since I've (Diana) blogged. So many things have changed since then with us and now, the world.
Since it has been so long, everything I want to say can't and won't be said in this post...just because I know I'll ramble on aimlessly!😆
So let's start with the present. For years we have wanted to put more effort into our website and acquiring more wholesale accounts, but let our daytime jobs and going to shows interfere with that. No, there's not a lot of time left in the day after you've finished your day job nor a lot of energy left after sinking many days/weeks creating jewelry and prepping for a 3 day show out of town(x 10). When you love what you do, it may be exhausting and time consuming, but it's all well worth it!
After being diagnosed with breast cancer and treatment (January-October 2018) and then spending most of 2019 trying ro ramp our business back up after all that craziness, we decided that we would spend 2020 focusing on our website and wholesale.
Little did we know then that the world would be turned upside down with a pandemic. It's funny (not really) how that worked into our plans. We only had two major shows scheduled (we used to do 10/yr.) and were going to spend the rest of the year tackling what we had been wanting to do for so long.
Yes, our only two shows for the year (March and July) were canceled due to the pandemic. Yes, that was disappointing and financially devastating, but completely understandable. In the long run though, we now had the time to work on our long time goals.
The wholesale part has not come into play yet, but gradually will, as hopefully in a year our friends in the retail business will be up and running full speed.
I like to run at full throttle and sometimes don't recognize what I'm doing til I run smack into a wall.🤦♀️ Cancer did that to me and made me reevaluate everything! I learned a lot from that experience...a lot of positive things. It definitely taught me that when faced with some very serious challenges that you can come out on top, if you fight for it. I'm not too happy about the pandemic, but I know we can navigate ourselves through it until we get back to normal...whatever that may be.
I am, as of now, officially retired from my day job working as an Instructional Aide in Special Ed. 🙌 BSpoken is my job! For 7 years I've wanted to retire, but chose not to. This last school year (before pandemic set in) it finally felt like the time was right!🍾 Now I can play with clay all day!😆
We will continue to do what we love, because you make that possible. Every like, follow, share, comment, personal note, and purchase allows us to share our creativity with you....and for that we are very, very grateful.😊😘