Even the biggest of pieces is so lightweight that customers forget they are wearing it.
Just as Thomas mentioned wanting to sell to a wider audience, Rich thinks it would be great to be in a lot of stores and sell more wholesale but he doesn’t want to lose the connection they have now with their customers.
“We want to expand,” Rich said. “We do online sales now. We have a website and have Facebook. We want to continue doing craft shows because you want to connect with people that you sell to. You have people that come to shows every year that look forward to seeing you. And you have people that come to shows that are looking for something they saw online.”
Thomas said she can usually get at least 30 pieces of jewelry out of each cane, depending on the sizes and if she incorporates other canes into a design. One thing BSpoken Designs LLC does not do is repeat canes.
So if a customer sees something they like they should act fast. They appear at approximately nine art fairs a year and Rich estimates they make at least 2,600 pieces a year. “We are starting to get a little following,” Rich said.
“Some people go absolutely haywire for a piece,” Thomas said. “We met this one lady at the Indiana Artisan Marketplace and she bought a piece and wore it around, telling everyone about it, then came back. And I think she has ordered more pieces on line.”
Occasionally, they do commissioned work, like horseshoe shaped pendants for The Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development to celebrate this year’s Kentucky Derby. “We were commissioned to do a wedding but she changed the bridesmaid’s dresses needed something different than what I was doing,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t come up with anything else. It has to look right. If it doesn’t, then I’m not going to do it.”
BSpoken now sells earrings, rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Rich is currently working on a lot of bracelets.
“Sometimes the ideas come faster,” Thomas said. “I can get one piece produced but sometimes we have so many things going on it is a lot harder to get those pieces out because I want to wear them or give them to someone to wear to make sure they are durable, that they are of quality that they will be what I want to sell.
” Currently they are planning to release the new donut shaped design later this summer.
As you can tell, a lot goes in behind the scenes for these independent artists. They have jewelry design and booth design in addition to packaging of the product and marketing.
“Well, we kind of see eye to eye on stuff like that,” Thomas said. “Our jewelry itself is in essence kind of organic looking. Now we have moved over to black (from natural) because we like black. Whatever we do, when you think about marketing, everything has to be cohesive. So we have incorporated his drawings into a lot of the things we do, like the tags. The background is one of his drawings.”