Photos: Courtesy of Andrea Andújar

Blurb from Ny Wesson

Without a doubt, accessories could be the main key to compliment your outfit. Whether it’s an elegant pearl necklace or studded frame specs, it does the job. The mother and daughter duo, Andrea Andujar has built a line of fine jewelry to match all styles and personalities. Interviewing these lovely ladies was an honor and I’ve gained a higher level of appreciation for jewelry designers.

Andrea Andújar’s Jewelry’s Bio:

Andrea Andújar is a unique and distinctive jewelry line based in Spain with an international presence. AA is the creation of a mother and daughter duo, Elena and Andrea. They travel extensively to get inspiration and to purchase materials, stones and fabrics from different places around the world. The handmade pieces are exquisitely detailed and present unusual and highly creative combinations of materials such as semi precious stones, gemstones, pearls and leather. They both have extensive experience designing beautifully crafted jewelry pieces for leading premium labels and boutiques.

There are two main collections: Red Label: young style and Black Label: sophisticated contemporary style.

GrungeCake: To give our readers a better description about Andrea Andújar, please tell a little about yourselves. Where are you both from?

Andrea Andújar: My partner is from Vasque Country and I from Mallorca. Actually, I live in Barcelona and my partner in Mallorca.

GrungeCake: What are your professional and non-professional interests?

Andrea Andújar: Grow up as much as possible in all senses!

GrungeCake: What does designing mean to AA?

Andrea Andújar: Designing means playing with materials and converting them into pieces of jewelry, that can be worn, in order to keep playing with fashion.

GrungeCake: How would you define your products?

Andrea Andújar: Little pieces of imagination.

GrungeCake: If any, what specific type of people do you believe Andrea Andújar most appeal to?

Andrea Andújar: Any woman who believes in herself and likes to make herself pretty.

GrungeCake: When did you both realize you wanted to become jewelry designers?

Andrea Andújar: Actually, it was more like a slow process. I’ve always seen my mother designing wonderful things; she is the mind behind this project. She was the one who taught me everything and who got me into this magical world, and suddenly one day, we were formalizing our ideas and creating a company.

GrungeCake: What was the first article of jewelry you ever designed?

Andrea Andújar: A beautiful necklace made of pearls, glass and black chains, and a type of jewelry that was style breaking. I’ll always remember it. A good friend of mine owns it now, and every time I see it, it evokes nice memories.

GrungeCake: How does designing jewelry differ from designing clothes?

Andrea Andújar: I’ve been working in both fields. I also like designing clothes, but I prefer jewelry and all you can create with it: beads, brass, silver, tools, structures. I think you can play more with materials.

GrungeCake: How long does it usually take to construct a piece?

Andrea Andújar: Of course, all depends of the kind of piece of jewelry I want to create. In general, it takes me from about 3 hours to 2 days.

GrungeCake: Some may think designing jewels may be an easy task and forget to appreciate the time and effort it takes. Describe the general process/es you go through to design and realize a piece.

Andrea Andújar: Like everything hand-made, it always takes a while. We do not make a drawing, which means that all ideas come from our minds. After that, you look for the material that best suits what you want to create, start making samples and you start playing… which is the most fun. At the end, comes the process to adapt and test the piece of jewelry, see that everything works as expected.

GrungeCake: I understand that Andrea Andújar is based in Spain, but with such an international presence, will AA branch off to the states?

Andrea Andújar: Yes, of course! At this moment, we are starting to sell on a designer’s website in Florida. We are also trying to sell in New York, where we have a good acceptation. Step by step!

GrungeCake: Who are some of your favorite designers? Explain.

Andrea Andújar: Alexander McQueen, without doubt: fantastic structures, the materials he used, his originality and fantasy in his designs and the power they had — impressive! Lanvin, because of his elegance. Amaya Arzuaga (Spanish designer), for her power. Balenciaga, sophisticated.

GrungeCake: What are some of your accomplishments as designers?

Andrea Andújar: The simple fact of founding our company, which has been a dream, is a great accomplishment. We are now starting to design for other designers, which I just love — to be able to share ideas with another creative person — it’s very enriching!

GrungeCake: Where can readers buy your jewelry?

Andrea Andújar: In these moments, we have our products in different shops in Madrid, Barcelona, Mallorca, and San Sebastian and in La Coruña. Also, we have products on these websites: www.touch2give.com and www.mocashop.com

Lia wears many hats. She is the owner of a large online jewelry shop, properly titled “omglia.com” and a full-time student. To find out more about this sweet, inspirational 19 year old girl from Louisville, Kentucky, kindly scroll down to get started.

GrungeCake: I’d like to start this interview with congratulating you. It takes many sleepless nights, persistence, endurance, and passion to run any business – especially, one that has an online presence. So, Lia congratulations!

Lia: Thank you. You’re absolutely right about sleepless nights! (Lia yawns)

GrungeCake: You are the head honcho over at omglia.com, how does it feel to be Lia?

Lia: Oh man. It feels pretty awesome! It’s a very powerful feeling to know that I’m the admin, webmaster, marketing manager, CIO, accountant, not to mention designer and manufacturer for my own business at age 19. On the flip side, it’s also very overwhelming. Most of the time I have no idea how on earth I got this far – a series of fortunate events, perhaps.

GrungeCake: Where are you from and how long have you been creating this beautiful and fun jewelry?

Lia: I am from Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve been crafting since I was old enough to hold a pair of scissors, but I started making jewelry when I was 16 and got my ears pierced! I bought a bunch of earring findings and went to town, changing all my clip-ons into new, funky pierced earrings. The rest is history!

GrungeCake: As mentioned a bit earlier, you are the creator, maintainer, and the web mistress for your company. Approximately, how many hours of your day is used for your online business?

Lia: The time allotted to my business changes depending on my other priorities- I put school first at this point in my life, so I can’t do OmgLia until after my homework is done. But when you average out the “daily” tasks – mainly, packaging orders, creating new designs and promotion – I would say it rounds out to about 3-4 hours a day with my current schedule.

GrungeCake: What are some of your methods to balancing your social life, business life, academic life, and personal life?

Lia: Like I mentioned before, priority management is very important! Currently school is my main priority, and then social life/personal life. Once I graduate, OmgLia will become my primary focus and my full-time job, but for now it gets pushed into third. I have a cute little day planner to keep track of my homework, and I try to keep socializing minimized during the week and do all of my partying and hanging out on the weekends. OmgLia is squished into any down time I get. Most of the site updating occurs around 3am! I have the most time on Friday and Monday, so that’s usually when I ship out orders.

GrungeCake: How long have been in business? Who was your first online buyer? Do you remember who they are?

Lia: I started my very first Etsy account in 2006, when I was 16. I took a few semi-blurry pictures of some cute, if inexpertly created earrings, listed them, and posted about it on the Etsy forums. To my surprise and happiness, 3 of my earrings were bought that night by other Etsy sellers! It’s very rare to make your first Etsy sale on your first day of listing, much less three whole sales! The satisfaction at seeing those orders in my inbox and the fulfillment I felt knowing that people in the world wanted to own my creations encouraged me to create more jewelry and list more items. I’m not sure it would’ve gotten this far without those three customers that first day.

GrungeCake: Have you had any bad experiences with customers? What was your customer service like? How did you handle this situation?

Lia: I’d like to say I’ve had no bad experiences, but because I tend to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, things definitely get mixed up now and then. Once I sent two orders to one customer and completely neglected the customer who’d actually purchased the other order. The customer who received the 2 packages was enraged that her items had not arrived within 3 days, and then ignored my request to send the extras back with shipping reimbursement! That seemed very strange to me, as usually people who accidentally receive extra items are at least pleasantly surprised. But she was furious – I felt so incompetent! However other than that, aside from a few customers concerned about shipping times, my customers have been on the whole very understanding and kind. I have however had a few bad experiences with craft fairs and storeowners though… but those are different stories! Check my blog to read about that.

GrungeCake: GrungeCake has just become a fan of OMG Lia on Facebook. Facebook has been the bread and butter for some independent online businesses. Since you have signed up, has the Facebook fan feature been responsible for sales or an increase in current traffic?

Lia: I use the Facebook page in conjuncture with Facebook ads, and those have definitely boosted my traffic and gotten me a lot of referrals. If I took the time to update my official Facebook as often as I update my personal Facebook I bet I would see a lot more traffic (I admit I’m one of those obnoxiously boring status updaters! Want to know what I ate for lunch? Check my Facebook).

GrungeCake: Other than Facebook, how do you promote your business? ie: word of mouth, online advertisement, on campus, in your neighborhood, on the radio.

Lia: I have a lot of great ideas for promotion and have only done about 25% of them. Most of my promotion currently occurs online. I use social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace, Livejournal, etc to draw traffic with brightly colored advertisements. These are great venues because they are free and widely viewed, but it takes a lot of time to copy and paste the same advertisement a million times! A blog entry I wrote about getting free traffic can be read here. I have tried printed advertising without much avail, although paid online advertising like Google Adwords, Facebook ads and Project Wonderful have been extremely successful for me. Also, my friends have been incredibly helpful in promoting the site! They all model for me (look for them around the site!) and spread the word to everyone they know! I get lots of business from friends of friends. In the future, I intend to do more offline advertising using media and press kits to encourage bloggers or journalists to find me interesting enough to interview. I also want to make some YouTube tutorial videos on creating jewelry.

GrungeCake: How has the recession affected your business?

Lia: Primarily, the recession has reduced my sales. People are not as willing to drop $15 on a cute, handmade necklace when they can get a crappier, cheaper version at the mall. Before the recession, people were very interested in purchasing handmade jewelry based on the principles of supporting small (tiny) business owners, the benefits of “green” manufacturing, and ethical production. Those ideals are now second in line to saving money. On the other hand, my suppliers have reduced their prices, which has helped me save a bit of money myself.

GrungeCake: We have also watched videos where you have captured the moments of the drawing for the “Mario Mushroom Giveaway,” how often do you conduct contests.

Lia: That was actually my first giveaway, and it was SUPER fun and successful! I really enjoyed it and I’m definitely planning on having some more contests and giveaways in the future.

GrungeCake: What is your highest selling product? Is this product your favourite? If not, what is?

Lia: My highest selling product is a tie between the Domo Kun Earrings, Mario Mushroom Necklace and Jack Skellington necklace! Everyone loves some nerdy fandom! Personally, my favorite items are the Fleur de Lis metal necklaces and my charm bracelets.

GrungeCake: Who inspires you?

Lia: I am inspired by a lot of designers who started out or are still in the position I am currently in, running their own business entirely by themselves. The most inspirational would have to be Keiko Lynn from Postlapsaria (http://postlapsaria.com). Her designs are absolutely gorgeous and she has the most wonderful personality and style. I am also very inspired by Chelsea from Love and a Sandwich (http://loveandasandwich.etsy.com) and Cassandra from TalkProof (http://talkproof.etsy.com). I’ve always secretly wanted to make Plushies, and theirs are absolutely fantastic. I want to nom them all up! As far as jewelry sellers, I really like http://tizzalicious.com and http://thetinyfig.com. There are so many talented DIY business owners out there!

GrungeCake: How has the Kentucky art and jewelry scene received your jewelry? Who are your top competitors?

Lia: Because I sell mainly online, I haven’t had to focus too much on the local scene. My creations have been widely received among my friends in Louisville, although they have not perhaps been quite as popular at the 5 or so craft fairs and music festivals I have done. I really think my items would fit in better in a scene like Chicago or Brooklyn or San Francisco, where they are constantly having kick-ass craft fairs like Renegade and Bust Craftacular.

GrungeCake: Which college or university will claim the fame to your success?

Lia: I attend Indiana University, which I love dearly! I’m a Fashion Design major and I fully intend to start a fashion line after I graduate to supplement OmgLia, and then send lots of money and prestige back to IU once I am fabulous and successful.

GrungeCake: What does GrungeCake mean to you? What is your favourite cake flavour?

Lia: GrungeCake means cute, but not artificially so… Aesthetically appealing and yummy, but not mass-manufactured. ‘Cake from the hood, so to speak. (Lia smiles) My favorite cake flavor is carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Mm!

GrungeCake: If there were one fact, tip, or secret you could share with aspiring jewelry designers around the world, what would it be?

Lia: I’m always asked where I find all my supplies, and I never tell. But exclusively for GrungeCake, I’ll indulge my secret. Ok… Ready? *deep breath* Everywhere! No seriously. Ok, that wasn’t very helpful. I find most of my supplies and charms from Ebay, Etsy, crafty stores like Michael’s or Jo-Ann’s or Garden Ridge, flea markets, yard sales, the clearance rack at Claire’s, broken jewelry collections given to me by friends, even the Dollar Store. I constantly keep my eyes peeled for things I could make into jewelry. The key thing to remember is that ANYTHING can be turned into something wearable, as long as you’re creative about it! I invested in a $50 dremel to turn any plastic toy into a charm. And don’t be embarrassed to dig excitedly through a 5 year olds yard sale box. They probably have cooler toys than you could ever find on your own. Take apart necklaces for beads. Get some acrylic sealant and see what you can dip into it. If you can’t find a charm you want, make your own with Polymer Clay. Keep and open mind and the possibilities for creation are endless.

GrungeCake: What is next for OMG Lia?

Lia: Once I graduate, I intend to rent a studio apartment, fill it wall to wall with crafty business awesomeness, and work for myself full-time. Once I’ve gotten enough capital (maybe a loan or two) I want to open up a store in Louisville selling handmade goodies from all over. And like I mentioned, I want to start a fashion line. Then one day I plan on waking up and being Martha Stewart, at which point my life will be complete.

Thanks Lia!