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Camila Montoya's Sparkling Mission with d'Francisco Jewelry

Founder & Creative Director at d'Francisco

Join the conversation between Stephen Bland, a host from Wytlabs, and Camila Montoya, the founder of d’Francisco, a sustainable jewelry brand. Camila shares her journey from studying architecture to founding her brand, emphasizing sustainability and community building. She discusses the challenges of entrepreneurship, successful marketing strategies, and offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. Throughout, Camila’s passion for sustainability and commitment to building a supportive community shines.

d’Francisco is a sustainable jewelry brand that focus on sustainability extends to its community-building.

Camila Montoya
Founder & Creative Director at d'Francisco

I’m Stephen Bland, host with Wytlabs, an e-commerce marketing agency. Today’s guest is Camila. Camila, feel free to introduce yourself and let our viewers know about yourself and your background.

Yes. Hello everyone. My name is Camila Montoya. I’m proudly Colombian and I have a sustainable jewelry brand that it’s called d’Francisco that I believe we will talk about later on. But to introduce myself a little bit, I am actually an architect. I study architecture as an undergrad. And then I was loving it while I was studying it, but when I would start working, it wasn’t as creative as I thought.

And this is when I started doing jewelry classes for fun. And I started doing it while I moved to the US. So I got a job in Miami. This is the first time, when I moved to the US in 2019. And in my free time, I started doing jewelry and I was just, I don’t know, it was just so creative and I love it. I love the medals. I love everything about it. And I started doing it with my mom. This is why the name of the brand is d’Francisco because it’s my mom’s last name. She’s my partner in all of this journey. And that’s it, a little bit of myself.

Awesome. Well, tell me more about your brand

Yes. So we launched d’Francisco three years ago. Actually, yesterday was d’Francisco third birthday. So we turned three. Yes, I’m really excited. And we, so while I was doing jewelry classes for fun back in Miami, I mean, I had always this need of becoming an entrepreneur. Don’t ask me why I think.

I think my father pushed my brother and I a lot to become entrepreneurs. And then my brother started some years before me and I saw him all of his career, his journey. And I was so impressed by that. And I wasn’t that happy at my previous job. And I started a masters in New York city. And in this one, one of the main pillars was sustainability.

So I already have this idea of designing jewelry. I bought myself a 3D printer because I knew all of the 3D because it’s our architecture. And so I started designing animals and plants because this was my idea to express Colombia through fashion. I don’t know if many of you know, but Colombia is the second most biodiverse country in the world.

So it was, I mean, this was like my idea to kind of show my culture in a fun way, but also doing fun pieces. And so I started doing that. And while I was studying my masters, I started developing my business plan with a main pillar of sustainability. So d’Francisco is a sustainable jewelry brand. We design everything in 3D. That way we can reduce the wax waste, the water use, the energy use.

And we cast everything in recycled materials. The first material that we used was silver that we took from computer parts, kitchenware, and old jewelry. So everything we melt together and we create new pieces with existing material. And the latest one that I’m really proud about is recycled glass that we’re taking from bottles, jars and windows and more. And this was our latest collection that we launched in February, 2024 and it’s a mix between silver and glass. We hope to introduce more new materials, but so far we have two.

Awesome, that’s amazing. So who is your target audience for the brand?

So to be honest, it has switched over the years, I will say. So at first, I thought that it was mainly women. It was women that either are like in the design and artsy environment or actually believe a lot in sustainability or are Latin because they feel connected with the community. And although these main, like these are still our target audience, we have known that men actually really like our pieces.

So we have a strong community of men that have bought our pieces. We have a strong Asian community that really likes our pieces. So this one has been another amazing thing that we have found through the years.

Awesome. Well, tell me why you are different or shall I say better than your competitors?

Yes, I mean, I will say that how we have put it on Instagram and our website and everything is like we make cool jewelry with waste. And this is what we have become known about pretty much. We’re trying to revolutionize the fashion industry, more so the jewelry one, to explain to the people and kind of educate them to tell them, hey, we can still do fashion, but we can do it in a sustainable way. And so in any of our campaigns or the videos we do and everything with that, we’re not just trying to sell cute jewelry because you can find cute jewelry anywhere, but we’re also explaining to you, to the audience itself, it’s just like to buy from sustainable products.

And so this is, I think, that has made us unique pretty much. So yes, our pieces, like I actually spent a lot of time designing them because I believe in design. I’m a creative myself and I love design, but I know that overall, if we want to make a positive impact, we need it to be sustainable. And this is why we’re not only sustainable in the design process, but we’re also sustainable in the production part of the brand.

Gotcha. Awesome. So being around for three years and being an entrepreneur, I’m sure you’ve faced some challenges. What are some notable challenges that you face and how are you able to overcome them?

Yes. To be honest, I think that every day you have to face challenges and this is something that I love, hate about being an entrepreneur. So I actually really enjoy that. But I also hate sometimes because every day that you wake up, you need to face a new challenge. And I said that over these three years, we have overcome many different ones.

We start with production. This is something that the first year, it was really hard because we needed to find people that were willing to work on us and believe in us and we believe in them. So this was huge for us. We spent the first year trying with different artisans that were willing to work with recycled materials and this kind of like, it was a hard one. And then for example, as soon as we started sending inventory to stores or to pop-ups to participate in as many pop-ups and events as we could. This was another one because it was primarily me all the time, like explaining the brand. So this was another huge challenge. And the moments where you actually put a lot of effort, not only in time, but also money-wise, and then you don’t see as many results as you wish, then this is another huge one that we have to overcome.

I remember that one day we were in a trade show for five days, I believe it was last year. And we have invested a lot of money in that one. And the first year we were in zero. So we didn’t sell anything. And this is, I think, a huge one for entrepreneurs because every time that you invest, you think that you’re going to make it back at least. And I remember as soon as I finished that day, I was like, you know what? I’m out of these. I’m, I mean, this is a lot, but then.

The cool thing about being an entrepreneur is like, you have to believe in yourself so much that you can wake up the next day and be like, hey, we can do this. And at the end of the day, the trade show ended up being really good, amazing. And so, yes, I think in every step of the way we have to face every day with challenges in general. So it’s just like, it’s all about shipping, it’s all about production, it’s all about raw materials. It’s, I mean, everything in general but what is really cool about being an entrepreneur is finding new ways to find new ideas and to keep trying, keep trying. Persistence.

Awesome. Great advice. What are your best selling products?

Well, rings, I think people really like rings. We have some like the ear cuff, the cuff, as the one that you’re seeing here, people really like it because as I’m saying, like men and women can wear it. Rings actually too. So we start with sizes that are more focusing on women, but after we realized it, men also really like our products. So now we have from sizes three to 10.

So, for us, we’re always focusing on learning rings when we’re trying to design all of the pieces. So I would say overall, in terms of all of the collections, rings will be the main ones.

Awesome, that’s great. What is your future plan for yourself in d’Francisco?

Yes, well, I mean, I think that we want to add new materials to our collections. We’re right now working on two new ones that we hope, at least for the new collection, we can have one more. So to recycle as many materials as we can with our pieces, this will be one and the other one.

So far we have been in pop-ups and stores in LA, in New York, in upstate New York, some in Miami, but we would love to keep growing in the United States. In terms of Colombia, we have been in Bogota, but we would love to open in Medellin, for example. And then, because I told you before that one of our main customers are Asians, we would love to go to Asia and see how that will go. But that would be in the future so let’s see.

Gotcha. Makes sense. So being in business for three years, what are some successful activities you’ve done to promote the brand, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s, you said trade shows. What’s been the most successful way you’ve seen to promote the brand?

I mean, I think that everything has worked. So I started from social media, either if it’s organic or advertising social media and also participating in as many events and pop-ups as we could. That this has also been like awareness for the brand and has boosted our sales. Press has been a big one in terms of awareness. Of course, we are proud to say that over, I think more than 21 newspapers and magazines have talked about us just like in an organic way.

So this has been huge. But overall, I think the best one and the one I love the most is word- of-mouth. I know this is an old one, but I think this is a really powerful one. So we actually spend a lot of time in customer service because we strongly believe in community. So we know that, for example, if you buy one ring from us and you like it and you or if you have any issues, you write to us and we respond and we help you through that, you’re gonna tell your friend about it and so on. So it’s gonna start a ball that will grow and grow and grow. So I really love community and I think this is why we spend a lot of time on social media, for example, because we think that the more community you grow, the better because people will talk about your brand and other people and so on.

Awesome, that’s great. What advice can you give entrepreneurs that are looking to start an e-commerce brand?

Persistent, it will be the first one. It’s not easy. And, and I think that entrepreneurship in general, it sounds really cool, but when you’re in it, it is not easy at all. I think, I mean, I think just like, if you can join as many courses as you want, like in terms of SEO or social media or anything, so you can increase at least the number of views on your website, that would be really cool.

But I will also say that don’t just leave it there, like at first, also do many in-person events. That way you will track people from in-person to your website. So I will say a little bit of both. So social media is a really powerful one. And if you start building a community, that would be great.

One thing that I will say that we started doing more last year was that, at first, we were just showing to our community the good things that happened to the brand. So either, we were featuring this place and this, and we did this, and we just launched a new collection. But then, since we started working on the recycled glass, we faced many challenges through that collection. And we were telling the community, hey, we tried this, but it didn’t work out. So we’re going to try another thing and try another thing. And this way, you were feeling the interaction with people’s ideas to be like, why have you tried this and why have you tried that? So I think social media is really powerful for that, for building a community that later on will track you to a website to give you good sales.

That is amazing advice. Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you want our viewers to know that I have not brought up?

Not that I can think so. I mean, I will say that if you want to be an entrepreneur, just do it, just jump. I think you’re like, you feel that you’re really alone in this, but you’re not. For example, these types of platforms are really helpful because you realize that you’re not alone in this, that there is like a bunch of entrepreneurs working by themselves at their houses and then we can all create a really cool community and help each other. And this is what I love about PopUp, for example, that you actually get to know other entrepreneurs that are dealing with the same challenges as you.

That’s 100%. So the website is dfranciscojewelry.com. Do you want to put your and your socials are all defranciscojewelry, I believe, right? Perfect. Alrighty. Well, thank you so much Camila for coming on and I appreciate your time today.

Thank you, Stephen. Have a good one.

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