How One Jewelry Designer Grew Her Sales by 526% and Consistently Sells Out Her Collections

Acid Queen Jewelry

by Alex Camacho

How Alex scaled her jewelry business and sold out collections within 15 minutes

I’d like to introduce you to one of our superstar jewelry designers, Alex Camacho of Acid Queen Jewelry in Idlewild, CA. 

Alex specializes in making one-of-a-kind jewelry collections that go live every month, and her business has skyrocketed since she joined our jewelry design business mastermind program, Momentum.

Alex’s jewelry business couldn’t break through her income plateau.

When Alex Camacho started designing in her makeshift studio, surrounded by bones, chains, and charms, she wanted to create jewelry that empowers the wearer to live authentically throughout their day. Her aesthetic was developed early on, which helped her grow a big social media following even in the early days. 

Now I’ve got to tell you, Alex is a real go-getter. She wasn’t in dire straits when she joined Momentum. On the contrary, she was doing pretty well. She was making roughly $65K in revenue a year.

But she wasn’t satisfied with staying where she was.

Alex struggled to grow her jewelry business as a solo business owner. 

So let's dive into what Alex was challenged with.

Challenge #1: Reliant on Instagram to Make Sales and the Algorithms Were Changing

Her primary sales strategy was selling via Instagram. To supplement her Instagram sales, she had a few wholesale accounts and craft | art shows that she participated in. 

Alex had been on Instagram since the early days of the platform. She had a TON of luck posting and selling her products shortly after putting them on her feed or in stories. But, because she's a smart marketer, she started to see the algorithm shift and knew that her strategy had to change if she wanted to continue growing. 

As growing a following became more challenging, so did growing her sales or getting people to see her posts. Alex knew she needed a better-converting website to help get lurkers to make sales.

Challenge #2: Struggled Selling Through Her Ready-to-Wear Collection

When Alex first came to us, she was having trouble selling out her ready-to-wear collection. 

As a hybrid One-of-a-Kind Designer who also sold ready-to-wear collections, Alex had a groove that she followed. Post her OOAKs and sold out before the month was over, and the new collection dropped. 

The problem was that it was exhausting to always be making new pieces to make sales. Her mission was to sell her repeatable pieces and have in stock inventory that could be sold all year round. 

Unfortunately, this ready-to-wear collection wasn't selling well, and she didn't understand why. Her most loyal customers had already purchased what they wanted, and she wasn’t getting new customers consistently. 

Challenge #3: Limited Her Growth Capacity as a Solo Maker

Ambitious and driven are two words that describe Alex. With that being said, she didn't want to grow a big team at all. When she came to us, she did everything in her business without any additional support outside of her caster. She could see how this was limiting her capacity to grow for the long term.

“I was doing a lot of research,” Alex said, “and I felt like my only options may be going into a showroom or trying to hire another consultant. And nothing really felt right.” 

– Alex Camacho

Alex knew she needed some outside mentoring to help her grow and scale her jewelry business. 

On a quest to get some support to grow her business from $65K to $100K that year, Alex found herself on a free masterclass hosted by Flourish & Thrive Academy to help her Supercharge Her Online Sales. 

She booked a Strategy Audit to chat with our Jewelry Business Expert. As a result, she decided that she was an excellent fit for the Momentum Program, and over the next few years, her business scaled VERY quickly, not just to her original goal of $100K but to over $420K in just a few short years.

Alex increased her jewelry business revenue by 69% in only 6 months.

So within Momentum, we worked with Alex on four key areas:

• Building out her brand story, so people connected with the WHY behind her business;

• Optimizing her website, to turn visitors into customers;

• Increasing her audience through social media, email marketing, and strategic advertising;

• Putting systems in place so she could move faster, produce more jewelry & make more sales without working harder

When she entered Momentum, Alex had set a goal to increase her revenue by 10%. But six months after starting, Alex grew her business from a projected $65K year to $110K. Her second year in Momentum, she ended up grossing over $150K. 

Then, 2020 rolled around.

That was a rough year for everyone, even Alex.

“At first… I was just pulling stuff out of my studio and just selling whatever I could, to be honest. Like, it was crazy.” She told me. “But then, once we got back on track, I was able to really harness my community.”

Using strategies taught at Flourish & Thrive community, Alex learned to get comfortable on camera and leveraged virtual events and strategic marketing to continue growing her business, even during the pandemic.

By the end of 2020, Alex made $330,000 in sales. More than double what she had made the year before!

“I owe that to a lot of what I learned about branding and being on video and putting yourself out there, and really being like, the person who's guiding your brand.”

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7 simple marketing tips Alex used to sell out her jewelry collections.

Optimized Her Website 

Many makers don’t understand how to measure the success of a high-converting website and need to learn that they might be repelling instead of converting their website visitors into customers.

We offered her a website conversion audit that showed her some gaps in her messaging and User Experience that helped her increase her conversion rate on the most important pages. 

We also audited important website assets like her maker video and gave suggestions for copy. Alex has the imagery nailed down and has done an amazing job creating a visually appealing brand for her dream customers.

Created a Robust Marketing Strategy Outside of Social Media

Since Alex saw the writing on the wall with Instagram – low organic reach and engagement – she knew she had to build her “owned marketing” audience. So instead of just selling on Instagram, she used the platform to grow her VIP email list and prioritized them when she launched new collections and products.

She got into a regular email marketing cadence to promote her one-of-a-kind drops. She marketed to her email list in between drops to sell her ready-to-wear collection. As a result, her VIP List was always the first to know about new items and special offers.

She learned to set up automated sales and marketing funnels, aka automated email sequences, that nurture and build engagement on autopilot. Through email marketing and automated email campaigns, Alex started selling out of her collections quickly, sometimes within just 15 minutes of a collection drop.

Her customers are now trained to shop as soon as her emails land in their inbox. Her May collection sold out within ten minutes.

Started Advertising on Social Channels

The social media game had changed, which meant you've got to pay to play. Alex didn't start running ads right away until she had her “owned marketing” dialed in and her website optimized for conversions. These two factors were critical in the success of her advertising strategy.

Even better, Alex sold out of her one-of-a-kind monthly collections in March and April––which were both $25K months––within an hour of sending out emails to let her audience know about the new collections. (She actually had customers new to her circle who were upset that they didn’t get a chance to buy her latest pieces!)

Created Massive Brand Loyalty

Part of Alex's Strategy was to create brand loyalty and repeat customers so that she doesn't have to constantly search for new customers. Instead, she incentivized VIPs to join her email list and purchase more than once. As a result, her die-hard fan base combined with Urgency Marketing led to her collections selling out in 1 day, then 1 hour, then 15 minutes at times. 

Documented Her Production + Marketing Processes

Hired a Production Assistant and a Marketing VA

Even though Alex is a brilliant marketer and learned a lot of ways to create urgency with email and social media, she knew that if she tried to do all of the marketing herself, things would fall through the cracks. It's great to have intention, but time is a real thing.

So Alex spent time documenting her marketing processes and the strategies she learned in Momentum to train her new Marketing VA. As a result, her VA has been able to plan her marketing calendar, write and design emails, and support her social media efforts. This allowed her business to scale because she was able to clone herself. 

The best part is that her VA was only part-time and remote, so she has her working as needed, which helps her create a much more profitable business. 

Optimized What Worked

Finding winning strategies is AWESOME, so Alex knew that she could always do better with tech, automation, and systems when she was doing something well.

She learned how to document, delegate and automate to scale her business. Every time she launched a new collection, she evaluated and improved her strategy to make the process flow better and more efficiently. These micro-adjustments helped her increase her productivity and profitability as a multi-6-figure business owner with a tiny team.

Being diligent pays off because Alex grew her brand significantly in a short period of time and continued to grow every single year since then.

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Where Alex Camacho is now

Alex doesn’t necessarily want to grow her business into a huge empire––she’s building her business so she can enjoy life on her terms. 

For her, it’s all about living the lifestyle she always wanted, doing things like hiking two hours a day, taking a month off every year to travel, and of course, designing jewelry. 

As they say, the proof is in the pudding! 

Since she started Momentum, Alex had her dream wedding, took a month off for her honeymoon, bought her forever house, and reduced her work hours to only 5-6 hours a day. (And yes, she does go hiking two hours every day, just as she dreamed of!)

“[Momentum] was a large investment for me at the time, but I had a gut feeling that it would pay off,” Alex told me.

“I think that my mindset and the way I feel as a human are different. I’m less stressed about money, and I’m able to live a lifestyle that I want to live and spend money on things I want to do without having to worry about it.”