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My Fast Class in Business Law by Jackie Burke of #tiniluxjewelry

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by Jackie Burke | Featured Contributor 

This month was one of the most challenging and exciting months I have had as an entrepreneur. I had a fast class in business law and realized that I had been burying my head in the sand for too long.

Here’s the backstory: I launched my company, Tini Lux, in November 2017. My company is the first company to sell fashion earrings designed specifically for people with sensitive ears and metal allergies. It has truly defined a new category in jewelry. Prior to Tini Lux, earrings were given labels like “hypoallergenic” and “nickel free,” both of which were essentially meaningless because there are many reasons why earrings can reactions. Now, Tini Lux is a go-to, trusted source for people who want to be 100% sure that their earrings will not cause painful reactions.

When I launched my business, many well meaning people (without business experience) told me that if I could not patent my idea then I would never be successful. I believe this myth comes from watching Shark Tank, where the Sharks regularly ask the entrepreneurs if they have a patent on their invention.

My brand, while innovative and category defining, was not patent-able. That did not deter me though. I could list thousands of brands that do not have patents that are still very, very successful. I knew that the challenge was to build a brand and a destination that people could trust, and if I could do that then the success would follow (and it has).

What I did not realize though, is that although a patent might not be necessary for my company, there were other legal considerations that I was ignoring, like copyrights and trademarks. This all came to a head when I found out that my exact designs were being sold by another designer at Nordstrom! When I found this out I felt frustrated, disgusted, and violated. I am an avid follower of Diet Prada and The Fashion Law had read many articles about designers being ripped off, but I never expected it to happen to me.

I did my research and learned that from a legal standpoint what happened was a copyright infringement.  Jewelry designs are considered artwork under US copyright law.  A person becomes the owner of the copyright of original artwork the moment it is published. So, since my designs were original, I technically owned the copyright and both Nordstrom and this other designer were infringing on it.  Although I did own the copyright technically, in order to bring legal action against these other companies, I needed to officially register my copyright.

I immediately registered my copyrights for all of my original designs and trademarked my business name for my category of goods (jewelry). I contacted both companies with cease-and-desist letters and fortunately my copyrighted designs were removed immediately.  Although it is frustrating that they profited off of my work, I now feel more prepared and am more motivated to continue my efforts.

Now, on top of being a legally registered LLC, I have a registered trademark and copyrights for my original work. Hopefully this will deter other potential copy-cats, but if something like this happens in the future I will now be ready for action.  I am also choosing to be flattered by another designed copying me rather than be angry. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Four Steps to Launching a Successful E-commerce Site by Jackie Burke of #tiniluxjewelry

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Four Steps to Launching a Successful E-commerce Site

Photo by bruce mars from Pexels

by Jackie Burke

So you’re thinking about launching an e-commerce site? That’s great! Now, where to start?

There is so much information available for launching a business. The excess information makes it so difficult to know what to pay attention to. It also makes it hard to focus your energy on individual tasks. It can feel like you have to do a hundred different things to be successful. The truth is, you really should be focusing all of your energy on just a couple things when launching your site.

I launched my site, Tini Lux, in late 2017. Tini Lux is an DTC brand specializing in hypoallergenic earrings. My background is in systems engineering, so launching an e-commerce jewelry site was not in my wheel house. I had to learn a lot in a short amount of time.  I was overwhelmed by information and gave myself a to-do list of about 50 different things. It was really difficult to gain traction on my site when I was spreading myself so thin and not properly prioritizing my efforts.

My business really started to grow about 8 months in when I started to focus my efforts on just a few things.  Here is my simple formula for launching a successful e-commerce site. It is really important to follow these steps in order. If you already have an e-commerce site and things aren’t going well, start at the beginning of this list! Nail each step before moving onto the next one.

These are my four steps and focus areas for launching a successful e-commerce site:

  1.  Optimize your website. Your website needs to be ready to convert. It needs to be easy to use, nice to look at, have a clear message and branding, and have all of the information available that someone might be asking themselves as they shop. I have broken this down into four subtasks:
    1. Message/Story: Your story is the most important part of your business. This is what will draw people in and convince them to buy from you instead of someone else. Your customer needs to see themselves in your story. You will do much better if you tell them how your business or product will benefit them rather than what the features of your business are. Your story needs to be easy to see or find on your website. The mission of your business should also be clear and should be featured prominently on your site.
    2. Branding: Your website should be clearly branded. You need consistent colors and fonts, a nice logo, and a consistent voice in all of your content and wording.
    3. Images: This one is especially important if you a product based company. People need to see what they are purchasing. It is worth it (I would even say absolutely necessary) to spend the money for professional product shots.  Your customers also want to see the items in use and imagine themselves with your product, so lifestyle photos are very important. Your photos need to be high resolution, high quality, and have a consistent look or aesthetic.
    4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): I suggest doing so more research into SEO when you get to this step because there is really good information out there. I will sum it up to say that you should optimize all the portions of your website that you can.  Include your relevant keywords where ever possible, in your messaging, copy, alt tags, meta data etc.  Some parts of your website need to be optimized for humans to read and some for algorithms to read. Know the difference and tailor them accordingly.
    5. Call to Action (CTA): It should be obvious that you want people to make purchases. CTAs like “buy now” or “add to cart” should be clear. Make sure your CTA is visible and the checkout process is simple and painless.
  2. Emails: Make sure your website is set up to capture emails or ask visitors to subscribe. Your email list is one of the most valuable parts of your business. If someone is signing up to receive emails from you then they have already shown interest in your product. Set up an automatically generated welcome email, or series of emails, to give your subscribers more information about your brand.  Send regular emails to your subscriber list to keep your brand in their mind.
  3. Content: Producing content for your website is very time consuming and is an ongoing effort. Before you launch you should be sure to have some content available on your site to educate your visitors and keep them interested. Your content is where you can continue your SEO efforts by adding keywords that are relevant to your brand.
  4. Ads: Finally, you can start running ads. Ads can be very expensive, especially if your website is not up to par. That is why you need to go through all the other steps before your start spending money on advertising. At this point your website is ready to convert and you are set up to capture emails and keep your visitors interested. Now you can start running ads and driving traffic to your site.

There is no magic formula or shortcut to having a successful business. All of these steps will take time, effort, and money. It is really important to go through them in order and be patient. Good luck!

Finding Your White Space #tiniluxjewelry

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What is White Space?

You may have heard the term “white space” in the context of art and design meaning the portions of the painting or other art form that are left blank. It is a very important concept in those fields because often the white space is what makes the piece flow.

When I talk about white space here, I mean white space in business. White space is a catchall term for the portions of the market that are not being catered to, the products and services that don’t exist, the place where needs are not being met. White space is what does not already exist or what does exist but could be better.

Entrepreneurs are set apart from everyone else because they are always looking for white space.  Just to be clear, being an entrepreneur does not mean you have to start your own company. There are plenty of opportunities within your current job to find white space and meet an unmet need.

Whether you are a business owner, an aspiring business owner, an employee at a company, or still a student, you can benefit from shifting your mindset towards trying to find white space. You don’t need a revolutionary new invention, all you need to do is find the white space and seize the opportunity. When you start to think like this you will see opportunities everywhere.

Let me give you a couple examples: 

Chill House

You may tell yourself, there is already a nail salon in my town so I can’t open one. But consider founder Cyndi Ramirez-Fulton, she wanted not just a place to get her nails done, but also a place where she could grab a nice coffee or tea, shop self care products, and feel completely relaxed. So, she created Chill House, a 360 degree self care haven. There were already thousands of nail salons in New York City, but she saw a white space for people that wanted a full relaxation experience and she made it happen.

Tini Lux

My company, Tini Lux, was born out of an unmet need in my life and the lives of friends.  I had stopped wearing earrings in college because I had developed an allergy to the highly reactive metals that are generally used in fashion earrings. Because of that, every pair of earrings I tried on (even the ones labeled “hypoallergenic”) caused a painful reaction. I finally realized that there had to be a solution out there, but when I couldn’t find one, I decided to create my own.

I designed a line of earrings that were made with pure metals that do not cause allergies or reactions in humans.  So, I could have told myself that there are thousands of earrings on the market already so I shouldn’t bother.  But I understood that there was a white space there because although earrings already exist, there were none that worked for the 20% of the population with metal allergies.

As an Employee:

Before I launched my business, I worked for a very large company as an engineer. As a new engineer I had a lot to learn, but the training process was lacking and I constantly felt confused. For a long time I kept quiet because I thought I was the only one who was struggling. However, a few months later we hired another young engineer and I could see that he was struggling to find the resources he needed too. At the same time, many of the more experienced engineers were getting ready to retire and we feared that a lot of knowledge would leave with them.

At that point I came up with a plan to create a knowledge sharing and training program. My goal was that all the new engineers would have the resources they needed and the more experienced engineers would be able to pass on their knowledge more efficiently.  The program has been very successful in bringing engineers up to speed faster. It also resulted in a living training repository that every new employee will benefit from.

In Summary:

  • White space is unmet and under-served needs.
  • Ignore the notion that once something exists there is no white space left. There may be room to innovate on the idea and do it better.
  • Don’t tell yourself that the market is too saturated. There is always room for quality.
  • If you already own a business, reach out to your customers, what do they want to see? What do they feel is missing?
  • If you want to start a business, think about the pain points in your life or the things you, your friends, your neighbors regularly complain about or wish for. Is there an opportunity there?
  • If you are an employee, what is your biggest complaint? What about your coworkers? Your customers? How can you make it better?