My 1st Anniversary!!

Today is Imprint By Eileen's official 1st anniversary! On August 30th of last year, I filed my business certificate here in NYC and made my company official. You can see the evidence on the left! I cropped out the part that actually says August 30th, so you'll just have to trust me :) What an amazing year it has been--a crazy, amazing, amazingly difficult and amazingly fun first year in business. It's hard to quantify just how much I have learned and grown, as a business and a person.

This is me from last October, on the very first day I ever sold my jewelry in person at a market. This particular market was in a church basement--I clearly remember how nervous I was that first day. Nervous about everything--what to do with my money, how to set up the jewelry, how to talk to customers, and so on. I will never forget my very first customer--she was a young woman with long dark hair, and she bought an $18 memory wire bracelet from my table. After she walked away, I almost cried I was so excited. I made $120 that first day--although at least half of that was probably from my friends. Either way, it was my first experience watching people interact with my jewelry, and it was thrilling.

It's amazing to think that now, my store on Broadway has been open almost six months. I am so used to selling my jewelry in person now, and I've learned so much about how to interact with customers. The more time that passes, the better I get at everything. I think the jewelry I'm making now is so much better than the jewelry I was making a year ago. Which makes me excited to see what I'm going to be making next year! Everything happens one slow step at a time, but that's how it has to be. I still worry about what the future holds--my own future, and the future of my company--but I just keep on going, day after day, trying to do the best I can. And before I know it, I bet another year will have passed! Thank you so much to everyone who has helped support the first year of my company--I couldn't have done it without you!