Today we’d like to introduce you to Cansu Onomay Erden and Burcu Onomay Celik.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Cansu and Burcu. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
C.O.E: Actually, we also didn’t really understand how our story started, it happened very fast.
My sister’s hand skills are incredible. She can do anything, really everything. I always pressured her to do something that she could use her manual skills. After finally deciding to quit corporate life, we decided to start something together. We were sure we would do something handcrafted, but we didn’t know which way to go.
We have spent all our holidays in Assos (a town in Turkey’s northern Aegean coast) since our childhood as a family. We were always intertwined with nature, insects, stones, trees, fruits and so much more. There was a stonemason in the village of Assos. He was a stone scientist who takes out his own stones from all over the world during winter and during summer, he was selling his designs. Every summer we visited him and he always showed us the raw stones from the nature and it always impressed us. At that time, we only knew their names.
So, we knew we wanted to do something with the natural gemstones but we didn’t sure what to combine them with until my mother in law, who is in jewelry business, gave us a sample to try for her collection. After that, we started to grow. My sister thought of doing jewelry with ‘Macramé’ which is one of the oldest knotting technic. At the end, we combined it with nature and MYONO came into our lives. She taught me everything about macramé for weeks. We researched a lot, read a lot, learned a lot. Before we only knew their names but now we know each natural stone is a treasure. They have different characteristics, healing energies, metaphysical properties, uses and meanings.
We started to grow over time, expanded our product portfolio, improved ourselves with feedback from customers. We always tried to do original and unique designs. We have learned from each comment, good or bad. We’re finally back to where we are now. We continue to grow and learn.
B.O.C: The establishment of Myono was really sudden, but I think both my sister and I knew in our hearts that someday we had to try something like this.
I have always like to make hand-made products and use my skills to create new things from my childhood, my sister kept telling me that I had to do something related about it. But I did not intend to enter because I did not trust myself in the advertising, marketing and social media side of the business. Which is what actually my sister is good at. So, we gone to different directions in our business lives, till one day we decided to combine our strength and build up a company. That’s how our journey started.
Nature has always had a huge impact on me. I gathered crystals, gems and shells from the places that we travel so there was always a small collection in one corner of our home. So, we influenced by them naturally and decided that we have to do something with natural gem-stones. But we didn’t know which technique to use at that time.
I learned macramé from my grandmother in my childhood, I thought that it will be nice because macramé is very natural looking technique and looks very elegant with gemstones. And we decided to use macramé and silver with the gemstones. So, we gradually started to improve our technique we tried different Stones, different materials and we created our current designs. It’s an incredible feeling to produce something by yourself from scratch and watch people also like them and enjoy using them. Which encourages us to constantly develop and try new things.
Has it been a smooth road?
C.O.E: New beginnings are always difficult. To tell people about a new brand, make them love your products, to make them shop from you… This is one of the hardest things to do. There are already thousands of brands like you. Trying to stand out from them is not an easy way, we still stagger on the bumps, but we are always trying to move forward and improve ourselves by presenting the most unique products to our customers.
B.O.C: Jewelry market is very big, too many equivalent products and brands exist. I think the hardest thing is to do is make your own unique design and stand out from all these vendors. Also, to find the gemstone sellers that you can trust to reach high-quality stones is very challenging. Fortunately, we advanced ourselves in this matter and managed to work with reliable vendors.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Myono Jewelry story. Tell us more about the business.
C.O.E: We both make products regularly and we love the time we spent together. Other than that, I’m more on the marketing, social media and PR side of the company.
What we are most proud of as Myono is the fact that we have completely handmade products. We do everything ourselves so this situation makes us a little perfectionist. We are able to cut and open a bracelet that lasts for 2 hours without a thought, because of a tiny mistake that we will see at the end, which the buyer will never notice.
We are very proud of our unique designs. And we have always believed in the power of natural stones, so we believe that all our products give positive energy.
B.O.C: I am more in the creative side of the company. I always research about gemstones, jewelry sector and new techniques.
In each piece we create we try to express and complement a unique style; all of our products are handmade and we use semi-precious gemstones and rhodium-plated 925 sterling silver. We combine natural stones and silver with macramé technique, which turns out very natural and elegant.
The various colors and textures of gemstones is very inspiring. There are always different gems to explore and it is very enjoyable to design new products all the time. I think what we proud of is that we are open to innovations and not afraid to try.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
C.O.E: Actually, it is very hard to say, everything is changing at an incredible speed. But, of course, competition seems to increase. New brands are emerging every day, everyone is trying to copy each other, and it becomes increasingly difficult to be original. As a big shift, I think with social media that grows day by day, everything will be more online. We were thinking of having a small store, but because of the excessive expenses, online shopping works better for us.
B.O.C: We cannot say anything about the future but we are trying to challenge ourselves every minute and always searching and studying to improve what we do. It was difficult yet enjoyable to bring all this to reality and I think we can overcome all the difficulties as long as we do what we love.
Pricing:
- We have different collections from $15-$70
Contact Info:
- Website: www.myonojewelry.com
- Email: myonojewelry@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myono_jewelry/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MYONOJEWELRY/
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MYONOJEWELRY
Image Credit:
All images are taken by Cansu Onomay Erden
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