Simone Walsh, a jewellery maker for some 30 years, realised that her own business had become a sweatshop after visiting an overseas workshop with better working conditions. Walsh, who creates silver and gold pieces influenced by her visual arts background, initially sold her jewellery at markets in Adelaide and in boutiques and galleries around Australia.
From Etsy to independent store
In 2006, Walsh tried a new marketplace called Etsy, feeling sure nobody would buy jewellery online but deciding to experiment. She hurriedly listed a few basic pieces and was astonished when her first online sale happened within an hour. Having proven herself wrong, she established an independent online store, one of the earliest in Australia, back when internet shopping was not widely embraced.
Walsh worked very hard to make her little business a success, doing everything herself: making the jewellery, packing orders, running the website and mailing list, creating graphics, writing the blog, and doing bookkeeping, which she loathes. Her efforts paid off with an increase in customers around the world, initially mostly in the US and Europe, then Australians as they started to shop online more.
Exhaustion and realisation
By late 2013, Walsh was exhausted after weathering another gruelling Christmas. Her back, neck and shoulders hurt, the skin on her fingers was splitting, and for months leading up to the "selling season" she had worked over 100 hours a week. Life consisted of working, eating, sleeping, then working some more. Her health was deteriorating, yet she earned considerably less than average income and felt like she was barely scraping by.
Over Christmas, Walsh felt a sense of doom, questioning whether this was what success should look like. She loved what she was doing, but the reality of running a handmade business was gruelling. A friend visited her Adelaide Hills home, where her oven was broken and bathroom was falling apart. On New Year's Eve, talk turned to her business. He suggested marketing ideas to get more sales, but Walsh could not possibly make more jewellery, and substantially increasing prices did not seem feasible either.
Outsourcing and a better life
They talked until the sun came up, landing on an idea: Walsh could still design the components, but outsource their actual making, then assemble and finish the pieces. This made business sense, but it was hard to accept. Walsh was a maker and was not sure what it would mean to customers, or herself, if she was not making her designs from scratch.
Eventually, Walsh contacted an overseas workshop that appeared to be ethically run from a distance, but she wanted to be sure she was not engaging a sweatshop. She decided to visit in person. When she toured the workshop, she was amazed by the skill of the makers, the diversity of their work, and at such scale, and the quality was impeccable. Most importantly, it was clearly not a sweatshop. She was happy, and somewhat embarrassed, to find their working conditions were in many ways better than her own. The workshop spaces were well laid out and safety was clearly considered. The employees had set hours and there was a space in the sunshine for eating lunch. By contrast, her working space was cobbled together and lacking in safety basics, she worked way too many hours, and her lunch breaks were non-existent.
Soon after, Walsh finalised her designs and placed her first order with them. She started using those components in her jewellery designs and, to her enormous relief, the sky did not fall in. Old customers were still happy and she kept finding new ones. She did not need to work as much and could comfortably grow the business. It was life changing.
But Walsh kept thinking about the workshop visit. She was adamant she did not want a sweatshop involved in her business, but in reality there already was one: the one she had created for herself. Years later, that decision to outsource has fundamentally changed her business and life. She is no longer as limited by what she can make, and her pieces are more refined at the initial design stage, rather than continually being a work in progress.
Walsh is still often perched at her jewellery bench, setting gemstones and assembling pieces, but she is no longer doing 100-plus hour weeks. She has a life, whole days off, and time to take care of herself. These days she can spend time in her garden, go for walks, socialise and even take an occasional holiday. She also has more time to work on the business as a whole, something she has come to enjoy, though she still hates the bookkeeping. Simone Walsh is a jewellery designer and maker based in South Australia.
