International Womens Day
Today is International Womens Day, a day to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of all women; celebrating the journey to equality.
Did you know that women led small businesses contribute £85 billion to the UK's economic output every year! I didn't know that until I saw it on Holly&Co. What an amazing achievement!
I thought I would take the opportunity to tell you a bit more about Memor Jewellery, which is a small UK business and tell you what lies behind the logo.
For those that aren't as familiar with Memor or me. Hi I am Rachel, and I own and run Memor Jewellery and it really is just me! Well I do have a band of very supportive family and friends behind me, without which Memor wouldn't have been possible.
I began to think about Memor Jewellery in 2018, but it was 2019 when I decided to leave my job as a sales manager in events and become a small business owner. I had worked in the jewellery industry for a number of years previously and always missed it. I'd also been taking jewellery classes in my spare time to expand my skills, so it had never really left my life.
There wasn't a defining moment or an epiphany when I decided a jewellery business was what I was going to do. It kept coming up when my partner and I were talking about my future career. I didn't think I had the skills to do this, but I did, I just had to find the courage to quit my job and take what I saw as the risk of a lifetime.
Memor was born literally out of my kitchen, from my dining room table, although I have now upgraded to a jewellers work bench, still in my kitchen though.
I started to find my feet with the business at the beginning of 2020. I had organised some events to be apart of during the year, I had a plan which I hoped would really help grow the business. Then in March the ground changed beneath us all and most of my plans went in the blink of an eye.
2020 was a success in the end, it just wasn't what I was expecting, well I don't think any of us were really, were we! The jewellery did manage to feature in a shop which was amazing, but the real highlight was redesigning the website in time for Christmas, I might be biased, but I love it!
Memor Jewellery really is a solo act; I am the CEO, the cleaner, the IT department, tea maker, designer, marketing department, finance and everything else in-between. It has been a steep learning curve, and one that I am still on, but I am loving every minute of it.
I want to continue focusing on sustainability and using recycled silver, but I am hoping to expand and diversify to using gold jewellery in my main collections, currently I am only using it in bespoke orders. I want to continue to keep it real and speak about the current limitations of making jewellery whilst being 'eco', because there are some things that can't be made eco and its good for people that are interested to understand that.
The future for Memor is to keep engaging with the lovely community that we have started to build. I am hoping to release 3 new collections this year, one imminently, so keep your eyes peel and follow on social to get all the updates. Fingers crossed I will be able to come to some events and meet people in person.
If you're new to Memor, welcome I hope you stick with me and see Memor grow and if you have been here watching for a while, thank you for being a part of it!