I’ll start this blog post by admitting that it’s only tenuously connected to jewellery, but it’s a topic that’s incredibly important from a business point of view.  Not a day goes by when I don’t hear a business saying that they are sustainable or promoting sustainability.  While this is commendable, the discussion around sustainability needs to change.  Sustainability can no longer be a selling point; it needs to be a given.  Every business, however big or small, needs to take action to become sustainable.    I barely mention sustainability on my website.  W ..read more

In my first post of 2023, I’d laid out three goals I was hoping to achieve this year.  And I’d promised that the last post of the year would tell you how I’d done.  At the time I wrote that earlier post, I questioned the wisdom of putting my goals out there for others to see.  And to some extent I question that wisdom still.  But I did it anyway, saying I’d rather be the person who tried and failed, than be the one who was too timid to try.  It’s time for me to come good on that promise, so this post is about what I’ve done towards each of my goals. And I’d love nothi ..read more

The internet is rife with dazzling stories about how businesses can be run from anywhere these days. You might have seen appealing photos on Instagram of a business person with a laptop on a beach in Bali or wherever, with the golden glow of the sun falling flatteringly on their skin. While this may be true for some people with certain types of businesses, I’ve found that the reality of trying to run my jewellery business from two places is rather different. I’m in India as I write this, and if you follow me on social media, you may know that for the last year or more I’ve been travelling to a ..read more

I’m not one who particularly likes to follow trends, mainly because they come and go so quickly that by the time I’ve gotten used to a trend and actually started liking it, it’s whooshed past and I’m already un-trendy. It’s when a trend lasts several years that I start paying attention. That’s when I know that it’s not going to be part of the fast fashion craze, and might move towards becoming an enduring style. Layering necklaces has been all the rage for a while now, and it appears to be a trend that’s here to stay, so I’m totally on board with it. Layering is nothing more than wearing mult ..read more

I've had to change this post. It's previous title was "An Important Week for Girls". Why? The Taliban was going to allow girls who are of secondary school age to go back into education in Afghanistan. That is, until the U-turn I read about in the news. My eyes are blurry as I change this blog post while pretending I've got dust in my eye. So imagine what it would have done to those whose lives are actually affected by it: the girls who got dressed in their hijabs, full of hope and happiness, only to be turned away at the doors of the school. Imagine their anger, frustration, sadness and insecu ..read more

As I wrote a draft of this post, I had a bit of a revelation. So I've brought what I'd originally written at the end, right to the beginning. And the revelation is this - the reasons why most of us buy a piece of jewellery are quite different from why we wear it. Hold that thought. I'm curious by nature, and given what I do, it's hardly surprising that I've asked myself why we wear jewellery in the first place. After all, it doesn't fill our bellies, nor does it keep us warm. So why? Here are the reasons I think we wear jewellery. Let me know whether you agree. As a form of self-expression Th ..read more

The time between Christmas and the New Year is my favourite time of year. I love sitting in the dark in the morning with a cup of coffee, the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree the only illumination, looking back at what’s happened before I start planning for the future. For me, reflecting on the past is in many ways more important than rushing headlong into whatever I’m doing next. I’m utterly mortified at the thought of not learning from experience. So here’s what I learnt from the year just gone. The honeymoon is over They say that the second year of business is far trickier than the fi ..read more

I’m going to start with a little story from my past working life. One of my most capable and fiercest bosses once told me that I’d left out the full stop on a Powerpoint presentation that I was going to email to a large audience. I know what you’re thinking, but read on. She acknowledged that it might seem trivial since it made no difference at all to the content – people would understand it just as well with or without the full stop. But her point was that the people who were going to receive the presentation didn’t know me. Their impression of me was going to be based purely on what they rea ..read more

A while ago, I had a session with a branding expert, because I felt I really needed some advice, and wanted a professional opinion of what my business looked like to an outsider. In the course of our conversation, she asked me what I eventually wanted Halo Jewellery to be. I told her that I wanted to be the John Lewis of handmade jewellery. For those of you who aren't UK based and may not have heard of it, John Lewis is an icon of British retail, known for its quality and service, loved and venerated by employees and customers alike. She laughed. No, not at all unkindly, but she was clearly a ..read more

This might sound like the strangest of blog titles for anything to do with jewellery or business, and it certainly isn’t going to do my Google ranking any favours. But never mind, I think it’s appropriate. I was thinking about the path my jewellery business might follow, as it goes from nothing to fledgling to wherever it ends up. I started drawing the path, and it reminded me of an insect. The only insects I can tolerate are ladybirds and butterflies, so I decided to go with the ladybird idea, and ended up with the diagram below. Rather childish, I know, but I didn’t want it to look too corpo ..read more