Origin Story
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The pandemic made me do it!”
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I created an e-commerce business, BigEarrings, sort of spur-of-the-moment during the Great Covid Pandemic of 2020 (and 2021…).
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It wasn’t a brand-new idea — it had been on a back burner in my brain with assorted other schemes for at least 15 years. I had monitored the URL bigearrings.com for that long, but it was always unavailable.
But I’m a book publisher, editor, coach, consultant…I didn’t do things as frivolous as selling big earrings! I just wore them. And loved them. And I had experienced a good 10 seconds of joy nearly every morning for over 35 years as I selected which pair of big earrings from my collection I would wear that day. Joy. Select. Wear. Go about the rest of living. Repeat!
Then a funny thing happened. In the spring and summer of 2020, working from home, deluged more than ever with online ads, I bought at least four pairs of earrings that were too big for me to wear. I should’ve known I had a limit, but I had fallen in love, was mesmerized, and by the 10th time I saw each ad I was primed to purchase.
This is what eventually drove me to look up the URL again. What if I had a place to re-sell these earrings…? This time I saw bigearrings.com was for sale. But for more than I wanted to pay for no good reason as I didn’t have an earring business and I already had a full schedule.
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So I made a deal with myself (not one to pass up an opportunity that presents itself, even so unexpectedly…). I would pay $x for the site and not a dollar more. If the buyer accepted, then I would consider it my next undertaking, purveyor of big earrings! Well, the buyer didn’t accept at first or second or third, but within six weeks of negotiations I was the owner of an awesome web address.
Back to admire, joy, collect, wear, move on with the rest of life, repeat, a decent summary of my relationship with earrings. That is the joyful, lighthearted, appreciative spirit I try to bring to the site.
Instead of heavy descriptions, I keep them fun and I make “pairing” suggestions as if they were wine or cheese. But I make outlandish and mundane and provocative and silly pairing claims: Stilettos, Axe-Throwing, and Long-Island Iced Teas OR Steampunk Cosplay, Thesis Writing, and Peach Sorbet.
Instead of reviews, I include wry or inspiring quotes by famous people. Here’s what Helen Keller, Sonia Sotomayor, Serena Williams, or Anaiis Nin have to say about these vintage danglers…
Right now, I’m not sure what I want most for the future of this endeavor…for it to grow up and be a real business that I will run, for it to remain a hobby business that takes no more than 10 hours a week and allows me to go creative and deep with a joy that previously took no more than 10 seconds a day, or Option C.
After 8 scattered years operating a math tutoring and teaching business and an intense 25+ year run with book publishing, I suspected I might enjoy instead starting businesses and either selling them or passing them off to someone else to run. BigEarrings will likely be my kickoff to Option C, but I’m still having too much fun with it to wrestle it into practicality.
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