Baycrafts Jewelry

Baycrafts is a manufacturer and retailer of mid-priced costume jewelry for women which opened for business last May 2004. It answers the need of most women to feel beautiful by providing them with exclusively designed handcrafted jewelry.

Its mission vision is to provide all women the privilege to wear affordable designer jewelry and to teach them the value that confidence is the major secret to beauty.

Founded by Marianne Olano, Baycrafts began as a home-based business and later expanded to small-time manufacturing. At present, it has 10 seasonal workers and two regular staff who help in production and marketing.

It currently generate sales via direct sales to end consumers via its consignment outlets and resellers. To maximize revenues, it put up a website last December 2005.

Baycrafts caters to both end-consumers and resellers. It sells to end consumers through consignments in different department stores. It also has other avenues for selling directly – via its website and participation in trade fairs and exhibits and through its recently launched reseller program.

The company plans to increase sales through:
• Increase traffic in its website through a focused web campaign
• Generate more sales from existing channels like consignments and resellers through a vigorous marketing support and an enhanced commission package
• Open up new distribution channels through the creation of a direct selling network through sales agents and opening of new consignment outlets
• Intensify product development through a continuous market research on the internet, in the malls and printed resource materials.

The company will exploit the lack of well-designed yet affordable costume jewelry in the domestic market and target women between ages 21 to 35, belonging to the upper C to B socio economic status.

The major strength of Baycrafts is its ability to come up with many unique and innovative designs in sync with the latest fashion trends. Unlike its competitors who relies heavily on mass production and local designs, Baycrafts is able to serve its clients with scores of new designs each month. The sources of designs come from careful monitoring of changing trends in fashion magazines, fashion websites and websites of competitors.

Another strength includes the strong knowledge in marketing of its CEO and founder, which enables it to market via varied channels such as the internet, participation in fairs, bazaars and commissioning of sales agents – channels which are mostly untapped by its competitors.

I was born to parents who are both businessmen. Instilled in me within an early age is the idea that if we work hard enough for what we want, then we'll probably get it sooner than we think.

But before I went and opened my business, I was employed as a marketing and advertising officer for various companies in Manila. However, my salary was barely a pittance and it soon dawned on me that no matter how hard I work, it will never be enough to allow me a decent life. I didn't want to go abroad, and my next option was starting a business.

I had the resources since both my parents were already in handicrafts. I originally started with handicrafts, but since it had a slow turn-over, i decided to shift to costume jewelry which was more saleable. It doesnt matter where we were, jewelry was always selling like hotcakes. And so I decided to concentrate on this. I started with recruiting and training two workers. Now I have around 10 workers and we consistenly participate in trade fairs both in the region and in Manila.

skills training - Unlike other technical courses, jewelry making needs no complicated or lengthy training. most of my workers can be trained within 3 days and they can make the kind of jewelry we sell already. Even if they opt out to continue working with us, they will carry this training with them and can use them for their own benefit.

Direct employment - we usually hire people who live near our community. Usually persons who are walking distance from our factory, so we employ men and women, young and old from the nearby baranggays. They don't have to pay fare and they can go back during lunchtime to oversee their family. Later, we plan on setting aside a portion of our factory for children so we can employ mothers who cannot leave their babies at home. If the company grows, it can later support medical and health benefits for its workers.

Access to side income for women - One of our aims is to recruit as many resellers as possible. Our target sales agents are usually women who takes care of all the household bills. However, as we know, day jobs usually don't pay all of the bills. Baycrafts will give them a side income to improve their income and help them meet their day to day needs without them shelling a lot of capital. For a measly $20 to $40 they will have access to our products and our brochures so they can sell more and consequently, earn more.

Aside from this, Baycrafts has tied up with TESDA (TEchnical and Education Skills dEvelopment Authority) in giving trainings to groups of target beneficiaries to provide them with basic training in jewelry making. This in turn will develop more skilled people in Jewelry making, making our region later on comparable to cebu, the fashion industry center in our country.