1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?

Patricia Curts: We started as a small side project and an excuse to return to Taxco, Mexico, and work directly with silversmiths on pieces I couldn’t find anywhere else. That side project became a fully registered UK jewellery brand with a global customer base.

What makes us different is that almost everything we sell is handmade and commissioned directly from the makers. We don’t buy off a catalogue. We design with our silversmiths and bring those pieces to a UK and worldwide audience that genuinely values craft over convenience.

2. Since launch, what have been the 1-2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?

Patricia Curts: The first turning point was moving from selling wholesale to building our own direct-to-consumer ecommerce operation. We were relying on third-party retailers to move stock, and the margins were thin and the brand story got lost in the process. Going direct meant lower volume initially but significantly better margins and a customer relationship we actually owned.

The second was investing properly in content and photography. Early on we underestimated how much the visual presentation of handmade jewellery mattered online. Once we treated photography as a core business cost rather than an afterthought, conversion rates improved noticeably and the brand started attracting the right customer rather than just any customer.

Both decisions cost money upfront and paid back more than we expected.

3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?

Patricia Curts: Our three strongest channels right now are organic search, email and Instagram.

Organic search took time to build but it compounds. We focused on long-tail keywords tied to specific product types and Mexican silver jewellery as a category rather than chasing broad terms we couldn’t compete on. That patience paid off and it now drives consistent traffic without ongoing spend.

Email is our highest-converting channel. The customers on our list already know us, and a well-timed sequence around new collections or restocks converts at a rate that paid social rarely matches.

Instagram works for us because the product photographs well and the story behind it resonates with an audience that cares about craft and origin. What we learned is that consistency matters more than volume. Showing up regularly with quality content outperforms posting heavily for two weeks and going quiet.

4. How are you thinking about search in 2026 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?

Patricia Curts: Search behavior is shifting faster than most small brands are prepared for. We have noticed that informational queries are increasingly being answered directly by AI tools without the user clicking through at all, which changes what content is actually worth creating.

Our response has been to focus on content that goes deeper than a surface answer. We write about the history of Mexican silversmithing, the specific techniques our makers use and the stories behind individual pieces. That kind of content has a better chance of being referenced by AI tools and also serves the customer who is genuinely researching before buying.

We have also tightened our structured data and product descriptions to be more specific and factual. Vague copy doesn’t serve AI search or human search, so the fix is the same either way.

5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?

Patricia Curts: From what I’ve seen running a small ecommerce brand, the single biggest driver of a second purchase is how the first one feels when it arrives. Not the product alone, but the whole unboxing experience. We put real thought into packaging, a personal note and a brief story about the piece itself. That tends to stick.

Beyond that, I think follow-up content matters more than most people realise. Not discount codes. Actual information about the jewellery, how it was made, how to care for it. Customers who feel connected to the story behind a piece come back because they want more of that feeling, not just more product.

For me, community grows from that connection naturally. You don’t manufacture it. You earn it one order at a time.

6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?

Patricia Curts: Double down on owned channels first. Your email list and your organic search presence are the two assets that compound over time and don’t charge you more every time the algorithm shifts. Build those before you scale paid spend.

From there, double down on photography and content. In a crowded online market, the brands that win are the ones that make the product feel real through a screen. That investment pays back across every channel simultaneously.

On the other side, stop chasing every platform. Early on we spread effort across too many channels trying to be everywhere and ended up doing nothing particularly well. Pick two channels, do them properly and measure everything.

And stop discounting to drive volume. It trains your customer to wait for a sale and quietly erodes the brand positioning you’ve spent years building.