Starting a small business...

You so often ask someone how they got into their trade or profession, and it's the same when we meet people and say we have a small business making jewellery.

Roll back a couple of years and it all really started when we couldn't find jewellery that fitted Tumua. We would go to all the regular stores, Michael Hill, Pascoes, Walker and Hall... and they just didn't have stocked rings or bracelets in his size. They always said, we "could have it made for you", but we knew what that meant... $$$$$, money we just didn't have to spare.

I mean, Tumua's probably above average in western society in terms of his size, but there is a huge amount of the population here in New Zealand that are bigger than him.. this meant there was a huge market not being catered for and this sparked an idea in our heads (we will get to this more later on)!

It was then that we decided to give it a go at making some jewellery for Tumua. After we did some beaded bracelets at home, we both enrolled in Peter Minturn Goldsmithing School. A family run school that we really felt was a good fit, offering night classes and weekend classes to fit around our 9-5 jobs (Danika in tourism and Tumua in finance).

We loved it, and from there our journey into jewellery making really began!

We didn't however all of a sudden start the business and boom left our jobs, it was a long process, a process that took about 4 years in total to get us to where we are now.

After taking over a year of classes at the goldsmithing school we had acquired a bunch of tools and equipment and started working at home on projects. This is when we started selling our pieces to family and friends. The gap in the market was then filled, filled by us making affordable jewellery for people of all sizes! 

But honestly we had no idea about business, didn't know what our tax requirements were and had no experience building a website or business social media profiles. We were lucky enough to have been found by Greta and Laura from the Samoan Business Network/ Tongan Business Network, just by chance on social media and tee'd up a coffee meeting to chat about our plans with our business. We were then introduced to many more amazing business people, including the team from WE Accounting who have helped up in growing our business and fulfilling our tax requirements :) 

Basically we want to let everyone out there know, that it's okay to not know how to start, the key is making that step in starting. You may not end up following your initial journey plan for the business and that's also okay, but have a business plan written down so you make steps forward and adapt to how you see your business changing in the future! 

This is our story... we want to hear yours! Share below how you came into your role, business, profession or trade :)