If you could create your own fantastic board of directors, which would be on this? Co— connects you to opinion leaders from the whole spectrum of business and asks them to resolve your greatest commercial challenges. In this edition, we ask an entrepreneur how to transform a hobby into a flourishing company.
In this edition of “Ask the Board”, we count Stéphanie MartinCo-founder of ThorumA jewelry company that focuses on unique alliances. Stephanie managed to do what many find it impossible: successfully manage a seven -figure jewelry brand with her husband while raising their family – without losing sight of what really matters. Below, she shares her advice on how to transform a hobby into a commercial business that changes life.
In 2012, my husband and I started making rings in our tiny garage in Colorado. It was not business – it was simply for the joy of creating something unique for people in love. A decade and more than 10,000 rings made by hand later, this passion remains the Thorum engine. Today, while we are at the head of a brand of flourishing electronic commerce in 2025, our trip taught us eight invaluable lessons that have transformed our hobby into a prosperous business.
Here are my tips for other creatives ready to make this jump.
Keep the Personal
From the first day, we treated each ring as a personal creation, and we always do it. Even if the orders flocked, we insisted that each ring carries the same handmade care as the first. The scaling of the soul has become our mantra. To date, we design, assemble and polish each ring that leaves our shop. Growth has never meant outsourcing our passion. Each ring is a story manufactured by us, not a product of a mounting chain. This practical dedication maintains our high quality and our intact goal – all customers receive something in which we have shed our hearts.
Build your own brand identity
For years, Etsy was our launch pad – he gave us the scope and the customers at the start. But as we grow, we realized that our brand needed its own space to flourish. The market became crowded (the mass produced in mass flooded Etsy, which makes more difficult for handmade sellers to stand out). We therefore took a deep inspiration and passed from Etsy to our independent electronic commerce site.
It was scary to leave the familiar market, but that changed the situation for our brand positioning. On our own site, we completely control the look, the voice and the values - we were not only another seller on a large platform, we are Thorum. This decision allowed us to tell our history on our conditions, to build a direct relationship with customers and to strengthen what makes us unique. The lesson? Do not be afraid to leave the nest to let your brand fly alone. Your identity will be clearer for this.
Appreciate your work and the price accordingly
One of the most difficult lessons for a craftsman who has become an entrepreneur is to carry out the value of your work. At the beginning, selling on Etsy meant watching the launch rates and feeling the pressure to undervalue our rings. We fell into the reflection trap on lower prices could mean more sales. The truth? The underemployment knew our job. When we launched our own site, we have finally set prices that reflect the quality and handmade care that we have put. It was liberating to say: “Yes, our rings cost more than the groups produced en masse – and they are worth it.”
The scaling is not only to sell more – it is a question of ensuring that each part of the company is strong enough to manage this growth.
Stephanie Martin, co-founder of Thorum
If you do not trust the value of your work, no one else will. In fact, manufacturers echo this: “Please stop underestimating your work done by hand. It’s worth more. You are worth more. Have faith in yourself and increase these prices! ”
We discovered that good customers had come and they were happy to pay authenticity and crafts. Loking what you are worth is not unrealistic – it respects your art and guarantees that your business can prosper. Remember that you cannot develop a sustainable business at the prices of the dams without exhausting or feeling what you loved in the past.
Let customers fall in love and broadcast the world
We did not rely on marketing gadgets to develop. Instead, we focused on making such a distinctive and high quality product that customers cannot help talking about it. Whenever someone opens a Thorum ring box, we want him to feel a story come to life. And what do you know? People share these stories. They publish their rings on social networks, tell their friends the story of the oak to barrel of whiskey or the gibeon meteorite on their finger and come back to leave sincere criticism. This kind of biological love is something that you cannot buy in marketing – it must be won. And it’s incredibly powerful: word of mouth is between 20% and 50% of all purchasing decisions.
In our case, it is the engine of our growth. Satisfied customers have become our ambassadors, creating a training effect that no advertisement could match. We now have more than 5,000 five -star reviews to show for this, each essentially a customer saying to another customer: “it was worth it”.
The point to remember: do something worth talking. If people really like your product, they will become your most authentic storytellers and channels.
Become stronger, not just bigger
The scaling is not only to sell more – it is a question of ensuring that each part of the company is strong enough to manage this growth. For us, it meant focusing on the little glamorous but essential work: improving our tools, refining shipping logistics in our Tennessee warehouse and hiring people who really shared our vision. Could we maintain quality at a higher volume? Could we respond to 10 times more requests for information with the same personal touch? Could we grow without losing what made us special? When the orders arrived, the response had to be “yes”.
Every detail, from production to delivery, had to work in harmony if we were to keep the crafts in the heart of Thorum. Some days, it was as if we had exchanged our creative tools for a calculator. But the management of these details of smallest notable meant that we could continue to make rings with the same heart and the same knowledge as when we started. It was a small price to pay for growth that did not make us more important, but better.
Engage in sustainability and ethical practices
What was once a trend has become an expectation: consumers in 2025 want to buy from companies who care about sustainability and ethics. For Thorum, it was not negotiable from the first day.
The use of recovered whiskey barrel wood, offering alternative metals and reusing meteorite fragments are not gadgets – it is a reflection of our commitment to make products with character and conscience. Being able to tell our customers where the wood of their ring comes from, or that their stone has not financed conflicts is all.
Remember why you started first
When pressures in the management of a commercial frame, it is easy to lose sight of why you started. We have learned to constantly remember that we have not started Thorum just to make money; We started it because we like what we do. By keeping our original objective in the home – by making unique and significant rings – we avoided being caught in the trends that did not suit us. This clarity kept us anchored for difficult times. The success followed as a by-product to do what we like, not the other way around. In short, if you keep passion at the heart, your business can survive storms with its intact identity.
In Thorum, each ring has more than a design – it has a unique story of perseverance, creativity and love. We hope that our trip inspires you to take this first step, knowing that each big business begins with a simple and sincere idea.
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