#dearrae

Tu croyais quand même pas que j’allais me contenter d’une étude sociologique sur l’Afrique du Sud sans me fendre d’une investigation sur la planète du cool ici-bas ? Ce serait mal me connaitre. 

Loving the new "Let's get Tropsi" collection and lookbook from Dear Rae.

You may remember their beautiful brass and silver rings from our Spring Pop Up -  the "Zwei" and "Sun and Moon" rings were particularly popular (I wear mine almost everyday!!)  

Karin started her Dear Rae venture in Cape Town in 2010 and last year opened her studio and shop at the Foundry in Woodstock. She studied BA Fine Art (Jewellery and Metal Techniques) at Stellenbosch University and finished in 2009. In 2008 she completed a semester at the Pforzheim Hochschule in Germany. This exchange was a very significant experience in Karin’s studies, it refined her skills and inspired her to start Dear Rae.

As JGH saw the huge potential in an e-commerce product specifically developed for small-size creative businesses, Jens started talking to Karin beginning of the year and a very intense collaboration began. In weekly meetings Karin gave her input as a retailer and shop owner on our development and beginning of May the first Shopstar was launched.

Says Karin: "Since the launch of our online shop the sales at Dear Rae Jewellery have doubled. During the two days after we launched the website we had over 9700 page views! And since then the page views have stayed consistently higher than what we were getting before.

We have had orders from South Africa, USA, Hungary, Switzerland, Russia and Belgium. And we have had visits on our site from audiences spanning over 85 different countries.

We have found that having this online shop has not only increased our online sales, but has also improved our shop and market sales greatly. We are excited to say that we are fast approaching our 100th online sale and are looking forward to many many more."

Says Karin: "Working with JGH has been an absolute pleasure. The whole process has been a really pleasant learning curve for us. Often creative entrepeneurs feel quite overwhelmed by the IT-world. We know what we want our websites and online stores to look like but it's often difficult to communicate it to someone who understands IT programming but not aesthetics. JGH have filled this gap, they are a dynamic team who are able to grasp both the technical and the aesthetic aspects of building a website and online store.