Archive for the 'Eskae Jeweller Studio' Category

Eskae Jewellery Sparkles!

What day could be better spent than one filled with diamond jewellery and lovely, wonderful people? A photo shoot with SM Productions, that’s what!

Sandy Mandow, owner and founder, SM Productions asked Eskae Private Jeweller to provide a vast collection of our diamond jewellery for their Diamonds Are Forever photo shoot and wow, what a blast that was!

Sandy, herself, took care of the technical stuff such as the photographer, wardrobe and makeup stylists and the studio location while I was asked to bring the brilliance, a.k.a., the diamonds.

Photo shoots can be long and tedious for some people but the experience was just the opposite for me! It was too short and incredibly fun spending the day with such fun, talented people and I’m definitely looking forward to the next commercial shoot!

And do you want to know what the best part is? You can see our final commercial production right here!

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Eskae Private Jeweller – Exponential Entrepreneur of the Year

Eskae Private Jeweller – Exponential Entrepreneur of the Year

Some of you will remember that a few weeks ago I was presented with the inaugural Exponential Entrepreneur of the Year Award – Start Up Category by Dr Marc Dussault of Exponential Programs.

Since that time Marc has been busy creating a specific page about all of his Exponential Entrepreneur Of The Year 2010 Award Winners

I have been lucky enough to be featured on the page as the second person down – you can go there now to have a look at the page by clicking on the link above.

I’ve had an amazing past 12 months getting everything together the way I dreamed starting my own business would be. I am more confident than ever about having made the right decision to go on my own and launch – Eskae Private Jeweller.

The reason I won the 2010 Exponential Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in the New South Wales Service Industry Category is in recognition of my incredible start as an entrepreneur and business owner.

When I first met by Dr Marc Dussault and inquired about his Business Mastery Platinum Program I was working as an employed bench jeweller and absolutely knew beyond any doubt, I wanted to be running my own business – I even had the name picked out and registered – Eskae Private Jeweller.

Even before I was in a position to open the doors to my new Sydney jewelry studio, I was crystal clear on what my business would look like, how it would run and who my prospects and clients would be.  Not only did I have this information on hand, I had a complete Business Building Blueprint™ filled in before I even had a physical location selected. In other words, I had a complete strategic plan established with a step-by-step process to implement my business vision of designing and creating beautiful, unique custom design jewellery for you – all thanks to Marc

I was lucky enough to realise the benefit of prior planning and was able to invest 18 months prior to opening Eskae Private Jeweller – making sure everything was in place for the launch of my new start-up venture. I come from a family of business owners, both my parents own their own businesses and now my sister and I have ventured out on our own with separate businesses. Since my immediate family circle also own and run several of their own businesses, you can image what the talk is all about at family gatherings!

I can tell you from being around business owners my whole life that far too many small business owners are impulsive and short-sighted when it comes to getting started in business they unfortunately lack the discipline to plan properly before they make their move.

Some of my proudest achievements since opening Eskae Private Jeweller in January 2010, include:

  • Designing from scratch – the ideal Private Jewelery Studio where I can not only meet with you privately, but also have a fully functional, multi-bench production jewelry studio to create all of the unique hand crafted jewellery that you can dream of. Not only will I be ensuring quality as well as control of the design process for you, but you also have the opportunity to view the jewelry at each step of its creation..
  • I achieved operational profitability within 3 months. This may sound a little self-serving, but its important for you to know that I’m running a solid business and that it’s not a flash in the pan operation – here today gone tomorrow. I invested 18 months prior to opening so that I would hit the ground running, delivering on my promises to you from day one.
  • Because I invested time in my entrepreneurial education, I was able to learn Exponential Marketing Strategies that involve Boundless Opportunity Thinking™, I started taking orders BEFORE I was even able to produce the final jewellery pieces. Because of this I was able to hire a studio manager from day one, ensuring that I could grow my business faster and with a lot less stress by keeping my focus solely on you. While my manager is taking charge of the production side of things, I am free to make sure all of your needs are being met. Through our daily production meetings, I know exactly what stage each and every single order is ensuring that any communication I have with you is current and up-to-date.
  • I created, developed and launched a new website that includes a jewelry photo gallery along with specialized pages specific to engagement rings, bridal jewellery, designer jewellery and Art Deco jewellery. I wanted to make sure you have access to the best available source of information possible, and I believe these special photo-filled gallery pages achieve that for you.
  • My website and blog traffic has catapulted from 220 visits in the first month to over 1050 in 6 months by leveraging Exponential Internet Marketing Strategies that ensure the highest quality people like you find me EASILY when searching on Google and other search engines by using the most effective and efficient SEO strategies available to me. Again this is all about making things as easy as possible for you.
  • My jewelry blog has already published more than 100 posts in the first 6 months – while I was busy launching my new business. Most Australian businesses don’t have a blog let alone one that lets you go through this amount of information for free. I am continuously creating and writing posts to give you the opportunity to inform and educate yourself on topics as varied as Pink Diamonds, Art Deco Jewelry, and designing your own custom engagement ring.
  • As a result of being able to implement various Exponential Marketing campaigns and multiple Pathways To Profits™ – being established, with solid Management By Metrics™ to back them up – so that you know Eskae Private Jeweller can be relied upon to be here when you need me. A 1st year apprentice jeweller has been hired within 6 months of the jewelry studio’s opening. Holly’s first day is on the 30th August 2010 and I am proud to say that I will be helping not only Holly achieve her dream of becoming a qualified jeweller who is capable of making hand-crafted jewellery, but also helping to re-skill the jewellery industry in Australia, especially when you consider there has been a worrying shift of large retailers stocking mass produced jewelry made overseas.
  • I consider myself to have a generous and philanthropic perspective in life; Eskae donated $1,435 to The Smith Family through their child sponsorship program in my first year of operations. I believe that I have been lucky enough to be in a position to help. If I take no action on helping others in my lifetime then I believe myself to have abused that position.
  • Sales have steadily increased each month since the initial launch. Just another way of saying that Eskae Private Jeweller is here for the long haul. I am so happy to have been able to build the relationships I have with all of you and I am looking forward to building more as the years pass.
  • Eskae introduced environmentally friendly cleaning solutions that required additional research and effort to implement within the production cycle of creating precious one-of-a-kind jewelery. This is vitally important to the environmentally sustainable footprint that I want to establish for my operations. Eskae is all about having a holistic and socially conscious approach to jewelry making. It is not good enough just to be able to make beautiful custom jewelry, it needs to be done in an environmentally responsible manner.
  • I have been fortunate to be interviewed for a new business book. I want you to feel confident and reassured of my commitment to you as a client.

I would like to thank Marc for his continued belief in me as well as his consistent raising of the bar!

To the other winners -

Bree Robbins – Paddington Pups Category: Queensland Service Industry

Gavin Buckett – The Gourmet Guardian Category: Victoria Service Industry

Ray Keefe – Successful Endeavours Category: Engineering Consultant

David Conroy – The Lone Drainer And Pronto! Category: New South Wales Service Industry

Congratulations! I am so proud to be considered amongst a group of people that I both look up to and admire for all of the things I have seen you all achieve and what else is to come, I can’t wait to see!

Over time, the other winners will be posting their own summaries on the Exponential Entrepreneur Of The Year 2010 Award Winners page so if you are someone who enjoys seeing people achieve, keep going back to the page and checking out their improvements and additions.

I know for a fact that because of the 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine that Marc and all of the winners of this years award are so passionate about – the page will get numerous improvements over the course of time, so for some of you just seeing Dr Marc Dussault practice what he preaches will be worth the time it takes to re-visit this page every now and then!

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Eskae Jewellers Studio Development Stage 3

Here it is!

After much designing, working the candle at both ends, very early starts to accommodate various tradesmen we have the Jewellery Studio on the home stretch!

Once the plaster boards went up, the Studio took on a whole new persona, instead of having only a skeleton to look at through the day, we now had a studio with some flesh on it and we could really start to appreciate the spaces that we would be working in.

The studio definitely does not have the biggest square meterage, so how we used each and every single bit of space was of prime importance, as you can see I was pretty happy with the way the spaces have worked out!

Getting the studio cleaned up for the painters to come in and do there work was such a rewarding thing to do as much as it was a pain! Looking back at the first workbench that went in – it felt like such a long journey to get even that far, I am actually shaking my head here thinking “my god, what a journey that was…”

Now I know why people get stressed when they do home renovations!

What a difference a coat of paint make to the place too! When I walked in on the monday morning, it felt so good to have it all looking clean and fresh and crisp with the coat of paint, We still had a fair bit of work to do but it was a nother major step in getting the Eskae Jewellery Studio up and running.

When the lights were installed, the difference that having them on all the time made to how we worked, was huge. We were relying on spotlights that were actually called “day-makers” these were more floodlights than not and the amount of heat that they gave off was unbelievable…

All I will say is this – Let there be light!

I would like to say thank you to Luke Miles from LME Electrical Contracting for their great service and experience in getting all my electrical parts sorted out for me, as you can see they did a stellar job of it.

When the jewellers benches started to go in, it was like the icing on the cake was being prepared. I have selected solid oak timber benches, which have all been finger jointed, and are all made out of recycled timbers. These benches will take a bit of a beating over time so they need to be up for the challenge of the day to day use that being in a jewellers studio will give them. As you can see they are starting to come together well and the all important underside of the benches with the workings of how a jeweller gets his jewellery made is still a little bit early on, but the benches are coming together that is the main thing and a HUGE step towards getting started in the studio.

There will be 1 more video log of the development of the Studio and I hope that you enjoy the stages of the development.

Sam Kritsotakis

Eskae Jeweller – Your Private jeweller

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Eskae Jeweller’s Studio Development Stage 2

Here is the second video of our Studio Construction series, it showcases just how the development came about along with the highs and lows throughout the process of constructing our dream!

This video opens with us erecting the joists to create the flooring space on the mezzanine. It wasn’t exactly the hardest part of the build, but it certainly did take more time than I had anticipated. To get the distance between each joist exactly 450mm, which is the standard in Australia, involved the use of clamps, spacers and muscle to hold the sometimes slightly warped 4 x 2″ joists in place. We then used galvanised roofing screws to hold the joists in place on the steel framework.

We then move to shots of my beautiful wife Sharisse helping me lay the flooring down in the Studio getting ready for the internal wall framework to go in. What the video doesn’t show you is that 2 days before – we had bought exactly the same floor and tried to lay it in exactly the same way, but for some reason it was twisting as we lay it over the concrete flooring. For some unknown reason to us AND no matter how many times we removed the twisting boards and put them down in a different combination they would always twist… in exactly the same way…

So after many hours of scratching our heads we decided to cut the losses for that day (and the next 2 – as it takes 48 hours for the flooring to acclimatise to its new environment) and drive back to where we got them from to exchange them for new ones. Now you have to picture this, Sharisse and I in messy clothes carrying 10 boxes – each one – filled with 9 planks of flooring timber ALL opened, ALL spilling everywhere as we tried to carry them, then asking for an exchange! I hate to think what the poor lady who served us was thinking…

Once we got over the issues with the flooring, you can see that it really started to take shape nicely.

Just so you know, the same thing happened with the new floor, but only to 3 panels of flooring, so we decided to agree that it was the concrete floors fault! and DEFINITELY not ours!

Next you can see that we have the internal frames going up, for me, this is where the project really started to pick up pace and start to look like something more than just a bunch of walls and some steel inside this unit. I am a visual person, so as much as I have had this image of what it is the Eskae Jewellery Studio will look like once done, to now be able to get a visual measure of how we were tracking was about as good as christmas! I could see the space defining itself and the proportions of that space defining the overall look and feel of the studio. For me – it was beginning to take on a life of its own.

Make sure you take a note of how I explain how each space is to be used, you will remember it when you see the next and then the final instalment of the Eskae Jeweller Studio Development videos, I hope you will find it interesting to see how they change from a simple wooden frame to a usable and workable space for creating and crafting your jewellery!

The framework that you see in place at the end of the video, took us about 1 solid week to erect and install in place. As I mentioned earlier it is the part of the project that for me, really started to pick up the pace somewhat. Things were getting made and installed in a matter of about a day as opposed to waiting days for something to be half way finished. It was also the first time that we could really see the space/s starting to evolve.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of our development where you can really start to see the spaces getting finalised and it will give you a glimpse into how the Studio will look when finished.

Your private Jeweller

Sam Kritsotakis

Eskae Jeweller

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