About a month ago I shared on my Instagram stories that I was going to be closing down Embody Los Angeles, a curated collection of fine, 14k gold jewelry that gives back to women’s charities monthly. If you missed it or are wondering why or maybe you didn’t even know I had a jewelry line, I’m going to be covering everything in this post.

About two years ago I wanted to start a brand, I didn’t know anything about wholesale, retail, or anything that comes with starting your own online store. I chose jewelry because I saw a gap in the market for solid gold jewelry that was dainty, had diamonds and had an attractive price point. If you’re from Los Angeles or maybe you have friends or family there, then you have probably heard about the store XIV Karats in Beverly Hills where you can buy fine jewelry for about wholesale prices. I wanted to create that experience online. My first mistake was buying the products too high and buying to much of them.

In downtown Los Angeles, we have a jewelry district with everything from wholesalers, jewelers, diamond experts and more. I went down there three days in a row to try and make connections and meet people who could provide me with what I was looking for. I was impulsive and bought from a wholesaler and I did not do my proper research. This is where the problem began, I bought my product too high. I didn’t realize it at the time, but if I wanted to provide a “wholesale experience” with really fair prices on my website, this was not the place to get my jewelry from. For my first collection I wanted to buy products that where already made and then I was hoping to design my own later down the road. I was seeing items I bought for my curated collection at 4-6x the actual wholesale price on big name jewelry company websites when mine were double… if that. My margins were WAY too low to have a really profitable business, my pricing was too high for my audience, and after paying tax, packaging the goods, shipping, and donating my 5% monthly, I was barely seeing a profit.

Honestly, that would’ve been fine if I was selling product like crazy, but I wasn’t. The sales definitely came in waves, majority from friends and family at the beginning, the pieces I priced low sold quickly, and then the more expensive items would sell randomly. I felt proud of myself for doing this all alone: no outside money for anything. I built the website, photographed every piece myself, filed all necessary paperwork and I really tried to learn how this business could scale. I even did pop-ups at two ba&sh Paris stores.

I tried my best, I’m proud of myself, but at the end of the day I bought too high. I failed, and I’m okay with that. I am writing this because I learned such a valuable lesson when it comes to buying wholesale and starting a brand. Learn about your audience, learn what people are in search of, learn about the wholesalers, learn about factories, learn about where your pieces are coming from, know your people. I was essentially buying from a middleman, who was probably marking up the items about 50%-60% from the person they bought from. I needed to get to the source, and I tried everything to find it, I couldn’t.

Embody was a passion project for me because I love fine jewelry so very much but I learned it is a really hard industry to go into due to just the cost of goods (i.e. gold, diamonds, gemstones). I am closing up Embody Los Angeles, because my heart is no longer with it and I don’t want to hold onto the inventory any longer.

If you are interested in beautiful, high quality, solid 14k gold jewelry with diamonds, I am doing a 50% off sale on the website now. Sale prices are shown in your cart. Everything is final sale. I have about 30 pieces left so I am hoping to sell them by the end of the year. We’ve sold over 70 in the past 30 days alone which again confirms my pricing was too high.

I also wanted to say thank you for following me along on this journey and a big thank you to everyone who purchased from Embody, it means so much to me. This may be the end of Embody, but who knows what the future holds, I hope to build a brand the right way someday!