My Niche Earring Brand Grew Over 10X To $4M/Year [Update]

Jackie Burke

•

Published: May 10th, 2024

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Jackie Burke

Founder, Tini Lux

$260K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Tini Lux

tinilux.com

from New York, New York, USA

started November 2017

$260,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

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The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extra... Gary Keller

Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence... Nick Kolenda

Want more updates on Tini Lux? Check out these stories:

1. How We've Grown Our Revenue 400% Through SEO And Word Of Mouth (2020) ➜

2. How I Launched A Profitable Earrings Business In One Year (2019) ➜

This is a follow up story for Tini Lux. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 5 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

I’m Jackie Burke, the founder & CEO of Tini Lux. We make earrings that ACTUALLY work for sensitive ears.

I started Tini Lux in 2017 because I had incredibly sensitive ears and I could not find any earrings that I could wear comfortably. I tried every pair of hypoallergenic earrings on the market and they all caused painful reactions.

After YEARS of trying & failing (and talking to lots of other people who complained about the same issue) I discovered information on titanium through a dental implant manufacturer. I learned about how it is non-reactive and therefore the safest metal for the human body. That was my lightbulb moment to create cute fashion earrings with titanium (something no one else had ever done) and from there Tini Lux was born.

I started Tini Lux with one pair of titanium studs called the “starter studs” (which we’ve since renamed the Livie Studs) and to this day they are consistently our best selling earrings. Thousands of customers have used those to heal their sensitive ear piercings. We’ve also expanded our product line into bridal earrings, kids earrings, titanium rings, necklaces, and bracelets.

We are approaching order #100,000 on Shopify and $4,000,000 in annual revenue which is a huge milestone for us. Since the start of this year our average monthly revenue is around $260,000.

I self-funded the business for the first 3 years and then in 2021, I raised $225,000 through friends in a sort of pre-seed round. Otherwise we have been bootstrapped, so to reach those numbers is incredible.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

The last time we spoke was in 2019 and we’ve grown our monthly revenue more than 10x since that time. In 2019 I was still operating the business as a side hustle with one part time employee. Tini Lux now has 5 full time employees (including myself), we’ve moved all fulfillment to a 3rd party warehouse, and work with a marketing agency to manage all of our digital advertising.

In addition to Shopify we have now made Amazon a priority as a sales channel. Our Amazon storefront is bringing in a significant amount of revenue and more importantly has a 20% net profit margin.

We now make sure to iterate many, many times on the same narrative until we find a way to say it that resonates and gets people to engage in the form of comments and shares. Over the course of intentional testing we learn new things and improve every day.

We are about to hit order #100,000 on Shopify and are projecting $4M annual revenue for this year. I’m also proud of the fact that we have an incredibly loyal returning customer base and high average order value which is a credit to how amazing our product is.

Back in 2019, Google was definitely our primary customer acquisition channel. As a founder that sells a solution based product, I have a lot of love for Google. The only challenge with Google as a true sales channel is scaling. We were limited to the people that were actively searching for a solution or a product. For that reason, we needed to be present on social media in order to find the customers who weren’t actively searching.

Press has played a role in building consumer trust and bolstering our presence online. We’ve been featured in many pieces about earrings for sensitive ears and that has helped with our SEO rankings and helps customers to trust us as a brand especially if they are learning about us for the first time.

Our organic social media and paid advertising strategies have been our primary focus for the last few years. We have had a lot of success on TikTok just from organically sharing our story and educating consumers on what makes our earrings work for sensitive ears.

I love TikTok because it’s a true discovery platform. People go on the app expecting to see something new (as opposed to Instagram or Facebook where people want to see people or brands they already know). I’ve recently become more of an Instagram Reels convert because it has the added benefit of going onto the feed of people that know and love our brand AND has the potential for new customers to discover us through scrolling Reels.

On both platforms we’ve started to become super deliberate about our content strategy. In the past we would basically post without any intention behind the posts. Now we test opening hooks, video formats, narratives, and headers to try to determine what formulas are consistently successful with driving engagement.

We are about to hit order #100,000 on Shopify and are projecting $4M annual revenue for this year. I’m also proud of the fact that we have an incredibly loyal returning customer base and high average order value which is a credit to how amazing our product is.

Paid traffic is becoming increasingly expensive, so we need to have organic traffic to supplement it. Engagement in the form of comments and shares are the most important factors for gaining traction on social media (and therefore getting views and traffic) so we are doing everything we can to guarantee steady organic reach. By being strategic with our organic content we are also able to better inform our paid strategy and in turn lower our customer acquisition costs.

We continue to release collections every 3 to 4 months because I think it is important to continue to offer new styles to our loyal customers who have followed our brand for years. Every time we release new styles we see a huge increase in boost in sales (see screenshot below).

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

The last 3-6 months have been challenging for us because our conversion rate was historically low and we have not been able to point to a reason why. I believe that the economy and overall state of consumerism was a big factor but I can’t say that for sure. For the first time in 6+ years it felt like we were doing everything right and all of a sudden it just wasn’t working anymore.

After the release of our most recent collection our conversion rate rebounded significantly so I think that one factor was that our product selection was a little stale and consumers were waiting for something new (another reason it is important to regularly launch new things). It was a frustrating few months but ultimately led to us being more intentional about our organic content which will be powerful in the long run.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made is ignoring bookkeeping and accounting. I’ve had a hard time finding an accountant and thus attempted to do my own taxes and it has led to a lot of headaches, tears, and wasted time. I finally reached out to my personal network and was able to find a amazing bookkeeper and accountant and am so thankful. It is critical as a founder to understand cash flow and having a strong financial team is the only way to do that.

The biggest and most impactful change we’ve made in our business in the last year was to focus on our internal content strategy. I THOUGHT we had a strategy in the past but now I see we were just throwing stuff at the wall. We now have a strategic plan that includes testing different narratives, formats, opening hooks, and content pillars. In the past, we would try one video and if it didn’t perform well write it off as not interesting and try something different (or just keep doing the same thing over and over with no results).

We now make sure to iterate many, many times on the same narrative until we find a way to say it that resonates and gets people to engage in the form of comments and shares. Over the course of intentional testing we learn new things and improve every day.

On the personal front, in the past year I had a baby and bought (& renovated!) a home. Between a baby, house, renovation, and running & growing two businesses (my husband is also an entrepreneur) it has been a crazy year for us but I am happy to say we all survived. It has taught us both the power of delegating and forced us to be laser focused on only doing the things that are the most important for our businesses.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

My dream for the business is to be a household name so every single person can wear earrings comfortably. I know it sounds like a trivial thing to be able to wear earrings but it’s important to a lot of people and I am so happy that our product has brought joy & comfort to tens of thousands of people.

We have some exciting launches coming up this year. I think we are finally in a place to invest in brand marketing in a real way and I’m excited for that. As a bootstrapped brand we have relied on performance marketing because it has a pretty direct return on investment. Brand marketing on the other hand consists of things like influencer marketing, events, pop up shops, podcasts, and more that usually take longer to see a return on but that are ultimately necessary to scale to the size we hope to be.

Retail is in our sights as well. My dream for Tini Lux is to be in Sephora. That might sound crazy since Sephora doesn’t sell jewelry, BUT I see Tini Lux as a skincare brand, not a jewelry brand. Yes we sell earrings, but more importantly we are selling a product that is made specifically to alleviate symptoms of contact dermatitis (a.k.a. metal allergies).

We are the only jewelry brand to focus all of our efforts on creating the best product possible for sensitive skin and for that reason I think Sephora is the perfect place for Tini Lux. If anyone can get me an introduction to Sephora I’ll be forever grateful!

In 5 years I’d love to be back here telling you that we’ve reached $25M a year in revenue and are a household name for every single person with sensitive ears! We have a product that sometimes feels like magic and I hope that we can continue to give that to our customers forever.

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

I just started using the app Lifetimely which aggregates all of our expenses and income including how much we spend on each ad platform and the ROAS on each ad platform. It allows me to see on a daily basis exactly how much profit we are making. It has been extremely helpful for understanding our cash flow and profitability.

I also recently read The Magic of Thinking Big. It was originally published in 1959 so the examples and stories are dated BUT the sentiment is just as true today. Essentially, in order to succeed you first have to actually believe that you will.

It sounds simple but it’s pretty powerful. You have to actually believe that something will happen in order to put yourself in the position for it to happen. As an example, I didn’t believe that I could be a compelling content creator so I never tried and was spending a lot of money on mediocre UGC from other creators for my brand.

In the last 6 months I finally made it a priority to be the face of my business and create content on my own account with the belief that people will care about me and my brand. Almost overnight I went from 1,000 followers to 16,000. Now I just wish I had believed in myself enough to do that 6 years ago when I started my business.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Put yourself out there!

A huge mistake that I made was hiding behind my brand. I hear A LOT of other founders say “I don’t want to be the face of my brand, I want it to stand on its own,” which is something that I said and felt as well. But unfortunately, as a digital brand founder you are usually the best person to promote your brand. And if you won’t be your brand’s biggest advocate, who will be?

It can feel scary or just cringey to put yourself out there in brand content but it is what people want to see. It’s much more engaging to see a real person building a business than to just see product photos. Look at some of the biggest DTC brands that exist, even celebrity brands like SKIMS or Rare Beauty.

Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez are not creating content because they want to, they are doing it because that is what performs the best for their brands and they NEED to do it.

I started to prioritize putting myself at the forefront of our content and it has resonated so much with our customer base on all platforms. Once a month I send out a founder newsletter where I talk about my life and things happening behind the scenes and it has consistently the highest open rate, click rate, and purchase rate of any of our email campaigns and usually doesn’t even have ANY product imagery, sales language, or even a call to action.