It all started out as just a hobby for sisters and Francesca Jewellery founders Rachel and Hannah Vasicek.
From their early days of selling bracelets at Tasmania’s Salamanca Markets to leading a brand with a huge international online presence, 173,000 Instagram followers and stores in two major Australian cities, Rachel and Hannah are now on track to complete their goal to donate $1 million to Australian charities.
The brand’s current Awareness Bracelet is for breast cancer and this is the fifth year Francesca has collaborated with the National Breast Cancer Association.
The partnership shows how far the duo have come — just over 10 years ago they were sitting in their parents’ living room making jewellery. Hannah was studying science and law at the time with the end game of being a practising lawyer. Selling jewellery at the Salamanca Markets was simply a way to financially support herself.
Still at school, Rachel loved seeing the designs being sold and was using the business as a platform to understand customer dynamics and sales. When Rachel graduated from school and Hannah from university, the sisters took a gap year and worked on the business together full-time.
It was at that stage they both realised they could do this for a living and the rest is history.
Today, the designer jewellery label employs a team of 60 women and has two brick-and-mortar stores, one in the Hobart CBD and the other in Melbourne’s CBD.
SmartCompany Plus sat down with Rachel Vasicek to find out why giving back is so important to the Francesca Jewellery mission, and why running a market stall is the best way to learn how to sell.
Each year, Francesca Jewellery works with 12 charities to produce the brand’s charity bracelets, which to date, have raised $835,503 for those partners. The goal is to reach $1 million.
This desire to “give back to our community” was cemented early on in the business’ journey, explains Vasicek.
“Early on in our journey Hannah and I felt quite hollow in “just selling jewellery” and it was after a little brainstorming that we created the Awareness Bracelet,” she says.
The bracelets raise both funds and awareness for the charities, in what Vasicek describes as a “multi-faceted approach” that “doesn’t just end with us handing over a cheque”.
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The business’ biggest donation this year was $50,000 for the recent flood disaster in Queensland and New South Wales, and the largest donation to date was $100,000 for bushfire relief in 2019. Both were through Awareness Bracelets where 100% of the purchase prices were donated.
The sisters are committed to providing meaningful employment to people from disadvantaged communities too, choosing to employ refugee women in Hobart to bead all of Francesca Jewellery’s bracelets.
“We had heard that women were arriving here in Hobart who could not speak English and therefore were finding employment extremely hard to navigate. Hannah and I found it to be a great opportunity to integrate them into a welcoming community and also provide them with employment,” said Vasicek.
In many ways, the organic growth of Francesca Jewellery is not something either Rachel or Hannah saw coming, but it’s also been made possible by their strong partnership.
“We never set out to make money or be empire builders, we simply wanted to love what we did every day,” said Vasicek.
“Naturally Hannah and I found our groove in the business and the lanes we really wanted to nail, for Hannah it was business growth and for myself, it was all things creative.”
According to Vasicek, the growth of their business has gone hand-in-hand with the sisters’ own personal growth too.
“At the end of the day we are sisters and it’s taken a lot of personal development and self-awareness to make the relationship not only last, but flourish. We acknowledge that we both play a crucial role in the success of the business and that we have to trust one another’s unique abilities beyond our own opinions.
“In retrospect when we look back at where we started in our parents’ living room to now owning stores and shipping worldwide we are both extremely grateful and proud of one another.”
Reflecting on the past decade in business, Vasicek says the Salamanca Markets was the perfect platform for both herself and Hannah to practice their elevator pitch.
“We learnt so much every single Saturday selling the jewellery to a broad demographic of customers and took absolute advantage of actioning changes each week that we learnt something new,” she recalled.
“It was in our first-ever store that we found the true value in nurturing every single possible customer. In a small town like Hobart, word of mouth will make or break you and it was our mission to give people service that they had never experienced before.
“To this day we coin the phrase “franc10” with our sales team and encourage them to give the same level of service that we did for many years when we were one on one with customers ourselves.”
This level of customer service feeds directly into the Francesca Jewellery brand, which Vasicek says the pair worked hard on in the beginning.
“We worked on refining our product offering, our aesthetic and values very early on in a way to form an identity that could not be mistaken for any other brand,” she said.
“Jumping on the social media bandwagon back in 2013 really elevated our brand presence and we began to create a really tight community with people all over the world.”
Vasicek attributes much of the brand’s success to staying true to its values and identity.
“I believe a mistake people in business make early on is trying to be everything to everyone instead of just nailing their lane. For us ‘meaningful jewellery’ was our niche and something we wanted to really nail,” she said.
Vasicek advises business owners who are trying to grow their business to find their niche in the market and really hone in on that.
“I would also encourage business owners to see their customers as a community, not just a dollar figure. People in this day and age want more than a simple exchange of money and product. They want to feel as though they are contributing to a bigger picture or at least an amazing brand story,” she said.
