SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Jamie Look has taken her jewelry business to Ottawa for a bigger market but with expansion comes new business challenges.
"I had to adjust my business in a lot of ways," said Look, founder of Jamie Look Jewellery, which specializes in muskox horn and sterling silver fashion ware.
She founded her business in Yellowknife but has been in Ottawa a little more than a year now.
"I'm dealing with an urban market rather than a rural market now," Look said in a phone interview from her new home. "It was a bit surprising how much groundwork needed to be done in order to present my business in an understandable format to urban markets down here."
That groundwork has included a website redesign and graphic design work to produce more cohesive brand identification from business cards to boxes and a catalogue.
Despite her new location, Look says her main sales still come from the Gallery of the Midnight Sun in Yellowknife and the airport gift shop.
She's proud to have recently got her work into the McMichael Canadian Art Collection gift shop in Kleinburg, Ont.
Look will never forget the box of muskox horn and other goodies she received from Sonny MacDonald, world-renowned carver from Fort Smith, following the announcement she would be one of the artists representing the Northwest Territories at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
"With that I made my first muskox horn piece and people went wild over it," recalled Look. "They just absolutely loved it."
It was off to the races from there.
"I've always been serious about (my work)," said Look. "I've been doing this for 10 years now."
She started in fashion design.
"I wanted to create an innovative product using natural NWT-based materials," said Look. "I listened to my customers and the gallery responses and it's morphed primarily into the muskox horn and the sterling silver jewelry that I now produce."
Fresh out of fashion school, she began by making pieces in a more avant-garde style, she said.
"It was kind of ahead of its time," said Look. "It sold quite well but as a business I had to look at the final numbers and crunch what would make me the most money, what was the most viable product."
Many artists and entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. Especially up North, Look said people have a tendency to undervalue their work.
"I don't think that people realize or have learned how to ask for what their work is worth, and that is something I noticed very early on in the game," said Look, who brands her work as a luxury product and most pieces cost a few hundred dollars.
"But if you treat it as a business and you start looking at the hard numbers it becomes more of a reality when you weigh in the costs, time, shipping, working with precious metals.
"I think I took a step forward with that because I believe in the value of Northern work. People don't quite understand the uniqueness of it in the world and it is difficult to ask for a little bit more but it's necessary."
She wouldn't give firm numbers describing how her business is doing but did say she has stayed strong for 10 years. Look credits her Northern clientele and thanks them for believing in her and her work. Being featured in the Globe and Mail as one of Canada's top trendsetters in 2014 was another big factor in her success.
Marketing and branding are a big part of business, she said.
"You have to be able to invest in that area of your business in order to be able to ask for (higher) prices," said Look. "If you want people to invest in you, you have to invest in your business."
Look is moving to more metalwork and focusing on the Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and New York markets.
With her children at age eight and five now, she's able to focus more heavily on herself and her business.
