Innovative Strategies: Barbara Levin on Entrepreneurial Resilience

Great, thank you. A pleasure to be here. My name is Barbara Levin. I am the owner, primary designer, and in charge of all with a wonderful staff at Athena Designs. We are a wholesale jewelry company selling nationwide with a little bit of commerce going to Canada, Australia, and now San Martin.

This is my third business and before this, I was an importer. I’ve always had a love of jewelry. I have no educational background in jewelry design, but I do have a foundation business and it was something that was a natural transition on a buying trip to Italy. It just kind of evolved and our first clients were Princess Cruise Ship and the LA Canna Museum of Art. And I just felt like on the right track and it has developed and grown over the last 20 years.

Well, let me identify that. We are a wholesale company, and only 2% of our current business is consumer direct. Now, a lot of people, clients that we work with, go to our website and order that way. We use every tech tool available to us, but we are not solely based on e-commerce. We do have sales reps in the field.

So I think in business, again, this is my third company and in each of my businesses, I think it’s really important to identify a niche market. In the jewelry company, our niche market is high-end resorts. It’s a terrific market. The population changes every seven days. People in leisure tend to just wander the shops, like to take home gifts, et cetera. So whatever business you’re in, I encourage people to find a niche because it’s what will set you apart and keep your business growing and flourishing.

We offer a year warranty and there’s a big emphasis on value price merchandise. So we don’t put designer ego on top of the regular prices. So most of the price points at retail will range from 75 to $125. And that is a real sweet spot. So I think it’s important for people to not get ahead of themselves in terms of pricing, but to always imagine themselves as a consumer and to make sure that the price point allows for an impulse purchase.

Well, one of the challenges that we’re still working on overcoming is, as mentioned, that only 2% of our sales are consumer-direct. And that has been a huge challenge. We have over 9,000 followers on Instagram, and we’re doing everything we can to raise the bar on consumer direct. We’ve hired a digital agency that we’re not going to be going forward with finding a way to communicate with Consumer Direct is the biggest challenge that we’re facing.

Well, there are two ranges of bestselling. There’s bestselling in terms of volume sales and then bestselling in terms of dollar volume. The bestselling is just something really simple that I came up with. It’s a stone on a pull chain bracelet so a woman doesn’t have to bother with a clasp. It’s got a retail price point of $30 and it’s just like our popcorn item. And then after that, necklaces that would be in the range of $50 to $75 are strong. Again, I think that it’s important, no matter what market you’re dealing with, to have value-priced items and to have that range of price points so that people can always have that add-on gift.

I think that one of the things that’s helped, even just in terms of e-commerce, is when I do our catalog, we make it embedded into a program called Flipsnack. So I can have a 45-page catalog with one line embedded as a hyperlink. And I think that’s helped a lot because our sales reps can just take this along and people can shop it very easily. That’s been great. And I think that doing promotions, sending out emails, you know, promotions are important, but I think that one of the things in e-commerce that requires a great deal of thought and balance is negotiating the optimum number of emails so that people just don’t overlook you. When people get an email from your company, they want to read it because you’re not flooding them with emails on a daily or weekly basis. So I think that’s an important component of e-commerce marketing that takes some negotiating and some experimenting.

Well, for entrepreneurs in general, I wrote kind of my list of caution. Number one, one of the biggest mental obstacles and emotional obstacles I had to overcome in business is that you’re gonna have downtime, you’re gonna have a slow time. And I used to panic and through a lot of mental training and jujitsu. I started training myself to take that downtime and reevaluate the line, up the line, research the line, and find what are better ways of doing things than we have. And I think that’s important because if you start panicking during the slow periods, it starts spreading to your employees and starts creating doubt. And then you start getting desperate with customers and that’s the last thing you wanna do. So effectively use your slow periods and down periods to research and up your game. And the other thing that I think is important is to be extremely flexible. We live in an unprecedented time where the means of marketing are changing so dramatically. You know, 20 years ago, it was easy for us to find sales reps, not so easy anymore. Younger people are not going into the industry. And also the number of small stores are diminishing. So it takes a lot of research and experimentation you’ve got to be flexible. And you know, there has to come a point where you stop banging your head against the wall and try a new route and keep experimenting, and not everything is going to be successful. So don’t be discouraged by that. And the other thing that I think is important is customer service. That’s a way of really distinguishing yourself in the market. We have a two-year warranty on our jewelry. And after hours, I am the customer service warrior. So it’s not unusual for me to respond to people at 11 p.m. on a Saturday. And one of the things I read about marketing is that if you have customers that have no problem and they like your product, there’d be a certain degree of loyalty. But if you have a customer who has a problem and you address the issue in satisfactory ways, you have increased loyalty to the brand manifold. So I think it’s really important to jump on it to go as far as you possibly can without hurting your bottom line to show up for customer service. It’s integral. The other thing for people starting is to know their weaknesses and know their strengths and be willing to compensate for the things they either don’t like to do, take away from the things that they’re good at, and build a business and find those people that can help you.

There are companies out there, like in the LA area, there’s a company called Buying Time. And she’s amassed a bunch of professionals that you can just hire on an hourly basis. So you go through one agency and you’ve got people who can do graphics, social media, accounting, things like that. So I think it’s important for people to make those identifications. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? How can you boost and give yourself more time to work on the things that build a business and how to do it delegate to the things and find people who can do the things that you don’t like to do and they’re not good at you Don’t have to be great at everything to be a business owner

Years of experience.

Well, I am a traveler and my two great passions are traveling and my business. I just got back from Patagonia and went all the way down to the very southern tip of South America in Chile. And I think for me, what’s important is to be able to combine the things that I love the most. So again, in terms of advising entrepreneurs, build your team, build your team, and don’t make yourself indispensable.

You know, don’t ask people to do things that they’re not capable of because that will create shame and resentment, but also help people stretch their limits so that you have a balanced life and you can also do the things that you love to do. Because what I found is the more I allow myself to pursue other passions in life and to be a diversified and balanced individual, the more I bring back to my company and the more it grows. So my goal is to continue traveling. I’ve got already international adventures for next year and the year after that. And it’s to keep building my team and also as mentioned to grow that consumer-direct business and to find those players that can effectively help us, whether it’s in social media or however they do it to reach out to more consumers directly.

I think that one of the things that I always tell people, if you’re if you are not an entrepreneur, if you’re working for someone else, and you’re considering going off on your own, I think it is very important to evaluate what that means. Not everybody has the mental, physical, the emotional wherewithal to be an entrepreneur, because once upon a time, a friend said to me, oh, you’re so lucky you own your business. You can work whenever you want. And I said, you’re right. I can work whatever 12 hours a day I choose. So, you know, it’s demanding and it doesn’t suit everybody. And so I think that’s the first thing that you have to be honest about. Is this something that you are prepared to do? Or are you better suited to join forces, either in contract labor or to work with a company that you respect? And if in fact, being an entrepreneur is your jam. Make sure that you keep a balanced life. Make sure that you, whether you run, swim, work in the gym, eat well, sleep well, travel, or do whatever your other passions are, because if you’re not balanced, it’s going to manifest in your business and take you down.

It’s been a pleasure. Been a pleasure. Thank you, Stephen.