Anne Vaughan Designs

Jun 18

In their own words

“I love the personal part of it, bringing people joy—the creativity just kind of flows through me. And it’s been amazing as a designer to create things and watch somebody find a one-of-a-kind or limited edition design, and it’s exactly what they wanted.”

-Anne Vaughan

Jason’s Interview with Anne

Jason

We're live on Meet the Jewelers and today we're talking to Anne Vaughan from Anne Vaughan Designs. We'd love to hear about your designs, and how you got into the jewelry industry.

Anne

I got into jewelry kind of by hobby. I studied environmental studies as an undergrad and got a graduate degree in teaching and learning, and thought that I would spend my life inspiring kids to protect the Earth. I did that for eight years. After my second child was born, I made the tough decision to stay home with both of my kids. I knew that it was going to be a challenge for me. I felt like I needed to have some time on my own, to contribute to the family as well as just feeling productive on some level.

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I kind of offhandedly mentioned to my husband one day that maybe I should start making jewelry. I had done it as a hobby in high school. I ordered $500 worth of materials, set a goal every day of making two pieces of jewelry. And I religiously created two pieces each day. The first place I ever sold our jewelry was at a farmer’s market in Roanoke, Virginia. It was an adorable little market and such a wonderful place to first present my work and be able to interact with potential customers. We live in Floyd, which is a teeny, tiny town, but Roanoke's about forty-five minutes away.

Jason
From your early designs, how do you see those being transformed over the last thirteen years as you look at your new collection?

Anne
Things have changed drastically. In the beginning, you're experimenting. I wouldn't explain the work as cohesive, I would have explained it as whatever I felt like doing that time. I never sat down for long periods of time. As you can imagine with two young children, it depended on how long naps were. As I sold the jewelry and we had some enthusiasm around us, it wasn't even a brand back then, there was some momentum. We had stores asking about carrying some of our jewelry. I would use the knowledge I had about the customers I had been working with for four to five years. I would design a cohesive, layered collection that would take into consideration what I had learned about my customer. When I design, I try to think of a statement piece and ground the whole collection. I love to create transitional necklaces that can be worn more than one way.

Jason
When you think through trends of the year ahead, what do you see?

Anne
I'm not really as focused on timing as much as some other jewelers might be. I do what I want to do and inspiration is everywhere. A lot of my customers aren't trendy. I would describe them as people who buy what they like.

Jason
How much of your business do you do online, as opposed to in-person and events?

Anne
A significant amount. That is an area that we're trying to grow because it gives us a lot of freedom. We want to build that confidence in our online customer. We do custom work on a very limited basis. That might change in the future, but at this time, I don't have an extensive amount of time to be able to do that. With the demands of two wholesale shows each year, and developing limited collections for each of those, we usually carry between nineteen and twenty-five collections for each of those seasons. It's a lot of work to develop those, acquire the materials, go through photography, all of that's necessary to create and replicate those collections.

Jason
Tell us some of the successes you've had making clients happy.

Anne
We love the personal part of it. We love bringing people joy. The creativity flows through me. It's been interesting as a designer to create things and watch somebody come up and buy that one-of-a-kind, or limited edition collection and that be exactly what they want. We love being part of family traditions, whether it's for birthdays or holidays. We do some retail shows and we see the same faces every year. We have a pretty active social media community. On Facebook, we have a private group called Anne Vaughan Designs Family Page and Instagram. I love to interact with our customers there, too. They help us name collections, give us feedback on designs, share how they layer their collections, and they learn from each other, or just share some of their favorite vintage AVD pieces.

Jason
In terms of jewelry buyers, why do they trust you?

Anne
Relationship is everything. When we gain a new customer, we want them to trust us and we want them to trust our products. We've always stood by our product 100%.

Jason
When you think through the next five, ten years, where do you see the future?

Anne
This is a really exciting time. I really want to rise employees into designers, having a design house where different people work. I see potentially having a smaller brand that's a lot more simple. Not as many beads, if you will, a little more streamlined, lightweight, inexpensive, more accessible, more easily replicated. I kind of see the business breaking up into three different focuses.

Jason
This is your platform to share whatever you like with Meet the Jewelers.

Anne
I find the items that I love and I put them all together to create cohesive, layered collections. Visit our website at annevaughandesign.com or come check us out on any of our social media avenues. We love to interact, engage, and share what we do.