Yuju

Hi I’m Sue, owner of Yuju. Late in 2010, bored of the daily commute and office politics I decided to do something that I would really enjoy.

I’ve always loved jewellery and fashion and the idea of bringing all my favourite styles together to share with other people was something that really appealed. I spent many hours making jewellery, my problem was that I had nowhere to sell it.

At first I ran jewellery parties evenings where your friends invite their friends to their house, everyone has a drink, and hopefully some jewellery gets sold. In addition to this I started to attend craft fairs. These events are great for meeting new friends and it was inspiring to see what other people were creating. Not happy with just doing this, my next idea was to open a shop. I did some initial investigation but with dwindling numbers of shoppers in the town centre and more and more empty shop units appearing it didn’t take very long to dismiss that idea too.

It was actually my son Ians idea to setup online and offer jewellery over the internet. I think the technicalities had made me push this idea to the back of my mind but, with his help, it sounded like the perfect solution. Being able to reach out to people across the whole of the internet, chat on Facebook and follow similar people on Twitter sounded like the perfect way to get known and get some interest, and a great way to share my love of jewellery.

We started by looking at other web sites, decided what we did and didnt like, and made the decision to keep it simple. One of the things we were certain about was that we wanted to take our own photographs. As a keen online shopper I have often browsed around to see the same manufacturers image on several web sites. I wanted to photograph each product individually showing all the detail of each piece. We started taking our photos and after lots of practice shots (thank goodness we dont use film anymore), some extra equipment and a short photography course we feel we are doing our products justice and getting them to look as good on our website as they do in real life.

After a few weeks on this project my passion grew for designing and creating my own range of handcrafted products. I love using charms, beads, semi precious stones and swarovski crystals and often incorporate reclaimed parts, such as chains and charms from some of my favourite pieces ...now thats what I call recycling! Because of this, my handcrafted items are either unique or part of a very limited design.

Im a keen user of Twitter and Facebook. I hate following companies or liking a page just to end up receiving update after update of promotional junk. I love to interact on social networks, sure, there will be the odd snippet about our latest additions and you can be sure you will be first to know about any sales, but most of all I like interacting so if you do send me a tweet, dont be surprised when you get one back.