From a jewellery idea to the first sold product

PART I – THE IDEA

Traveling is my passion and after visiting more than 30 countries, my girlfriend and I had an idea about how we can be reminded of our various journeys without buying impersonal souvenirs.

We love collecting shells on secluded beaches fromall over the world. It creates a meditative state of mind when you are surrounded by pure nature. The sea and its waves have always fascinated many people including surfees and yogis.

So on one of those days at the beach we thought about what we could do with the shells that we collected. We know that there is plenty of cheap jewellery with sea shells but after thinking about it for a while we have concluded that it misses three important elements:

1.  None of the shells are able to be attached to something without making a hole.

2.  None are minimalistic and none use quality materials like silver.

3.  No jewellery brand makes bracelets from shells that you have collected.

So we brainstormed about how we could solve these three issues and then came up with our first idea: after analysing different shells, we found out that Kauri shells are curved similarly.

It marked the beginning of p?f p?f jewellery.

Part II – Prototyping

We bought plasticine to confirm our assumption and tried our framing shell with dozens of Kauri shells. Then we talked with a local goldsmith from Munich to replicate our prototype in silver – it became our first working prototype.

The result was great and surpassed our expectations but after some quick maths we knew that we could never sell it at a competitive price – the price tag would have been more than €200 per bracelet.

So the next day we skyped with my brother Corbinian who happened to be in Bali at that moment. We asked him if he could search for a local silversmith to produce the first samples in order to test our idea.

Apparently there is a whole street full of silversmiths on Bali and he selected Indah and her family who were eager to produce the first few prototypes. Back in Germany we tested their durability for months and thought about ways to improve their design.

Part III – Off to Bali

After a lot of positive feedback on the first prototype bracelets, we booked our flights to Bali and spent 10 days in the rice fields close to our silversmith. Together we started making one prototype after another, coming up with new bracelet and bangle ideas and then we completed our first collection.

We knew that we couldn’t produce any summer pictures back home in Germany since winter was coming, so we set ourselves the goal to produce enough pictures to keep our social media channels going over the winter.

As a result we had incredible photo shoots in the middle of the jungle, on secluded islands close to the Komodo National Park and on Lombok. Thanks so much to all the models who supported us during our trip.

Part IV – Back home / The real work has just begun

When we passed through customs and brought our silver and gold pieces to Munich, the real work began. We had to 

• order our custom packaging
• get custom clearance for our signature cotton bags
• keep building up our social media channels
• take pictures of all the different bracelets and bangles
• built up our online shop
• clean and treat all our shells
• assemble each individual bracelet
• get a local store to sell our products
• cooperate with different brands for social media competitions.

Part V – Going online

After some incredibly long nights we finally went online just in time for the big Christmas gift storm and sold our first product.

So if you would like to help us continue our story and want to start wearing your memories –  now is the time

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