How I Started My Own Personalized Jewelry Business

When I opened the door to questions on Instagram Stories last week, “How did you start making and selling jewelry?” was by far the most popular. I promised I’d write a post so here goes!

It was back in 2003, I was stuck in a crap marriage and was miserable in my “looks fabulous to the public” fashion career. So I made big changes. I filed for divorce, left my job, went back to school for nutrition and started running. To avoid the NYC social scene and dating, I spent many nights hanging in my apartment, drinking wine and making jewelry, a hobby I’d had since I was 6 years old. While many of my friends were buying name charms to celebrate their babies, I wanted to celebrate my running and started making race charms for each I ran. And things took off! I taught myself CSS, built my first website, filed for all the necessary business paperwork and Erica Sara Designs was officially born.

My “big break” was meeting Ali Feller at a trunk show. She blogged about me, someone at Fitness magazine read it and contacted me to design a piece for their readers. From there, I worked on the official race jewelry for their Fitness/More Half Marathon which led to working with New York Road Runners on jewelry for the Mini 10K and the NYC Marathon. Suddenly I was spotting my pieces on some of the most famous and accomplished runners in the world. It was insane!

I’m mainly self taught, always been the kind to figure it out when I wanted to learn bad enough. And yes, I make my pieces with my own two hands. Here’s a photo of me making a runner silhouette necklace. So that’s the short version of how ESD came to be. The point? It’s not too late to go after what you want. If you don’t love your life, change it, even if people tell you you’re crazy from walking away from what you have. Your success can only be defined by you. YOU have to live your life so make it what you want it to be.

Questions?!? 😘