OMG Freshie & Zero is TWENTY!

I knew this was coming. I mean, I do own calendars and even look at them occasionally but... it's here. TODAY marks the 20th anniversary of Freshie & Zero jewelry. Cue the confetti! Blow out some candles! Pop the bubbly! That sounds fun actually. I need to plan a party!

In April of 2006, younger me legally registered Freshie & Zero as a business. I had been making jewelry for many years, but 2006 was the year I decided to really go for it. I had a dog named Zero and a fun nickname, ergo the business name was realized. As a life-long fan of craft shows, I was ready to set up a tent and some tables and sell some jewelry! More on how that went later...

Armed with a Studio Art degree and a love of crafting, I’ve built my brand on instinct and grit. I’m what you call the opposite of an overthinker. I jump in the water and then figure out how to swim. 

Twenty years in, my wing-it philosophy hasn’t really changed, but my business definitely has! I used to do 15-20 craft shows a year. I stopped doing those about 7 years ago after a particularly unhinged weather event at the American Artisan Festival. Thunderstorm, lightning, and hail? Lucky me! Never again.

I used to go to 3-5 wholesale shows a year. I stopped doing those a couple of years ago because it became too hard to turn a profit (changing retail/online landscape and all that). 

When I began in 2006, there was no Instagram, Facebook Business, or Pinterest. YouTube was 1 year old. Etsy was less than a year old! I applied to craft shows with slides. Silver was about $13 an ounce. (Recently it spiked to over $120 and now hovers around $80, which is a discussion for another day.) The picture I'm painting is that 20 years ago doesn't seem that long ago but IT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME. I definitely did not plan to have a storefront or to stop traveling to craft shows. Turns out, I love having a store. I miss all the traveling, but I love relaxing on the weekends. And recently it dawned on me I can still travel for craft shows, as a buyer! So much more fun!

So how did it go in the beginning?

In the first year, armed with mediocre jewelry and even worse photos, I somehow managed to get into some craft shows and even sell a few things! Was the jewelry good? Well... it was... hammered to death but the ideas were there! Were the shows successful? Mostly no... I definitely had to learn what shows NOT to apply to that year. Hot tip: skip any alcohol-focused festivals!

Did you have fun? YES. 100% yes. I had just started dating this guy not too long before, and he was a fabulous unpaid intern who was in charge of driving and logistics such as tent weights and sign hanging. He didn't hate it too much because we did get married the next year!

As the years went on, my jewelry got better, my photos got better (thanks to professional photographers), and the shows I got into were better. I got to do Renegade Craft in Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco - ICONIC shows! I won a grant at the Austin Craft Mafia's Stitch Handmade Revolution (even the craft show names in the early 2000s were iconic). 

I started doing wholesale a couple of years in, which had been my goal all along. I knew the best way to scale was not driving to festivals every weekend and paying for hotels, but to build relationships with retailers. Wholesale was a huge part of my business until I opened my retail store in 2019. Then, pandemic, then pivot pivot pivot. Now our retail store takes more of my time but we still sell jewelry every day.

Twenty years in and I still don't have a five-year plan... or a budget. I still jump in the deep end of the pool without knowing where I'm swimming. And somehow, here we are, a dream store, a fabulous team, and a jewelry brand I'm proud of. I wouldn't recommend my "winging it" business strategy, but somehow it's worked for me. Here's to the next twenty years of having no idea what I'm doing and enjoying the ride.