Chatting to the FinerRings founder
The stand-out tagline of the business is gold and silver jewellery that won't tarnish or discolour at an affordable price point.
Jewish-owned business FinerRings is celebrating 10 years of making affordable jewellery that doesn’t end up in landfill.
Founder Taiba Ash told The AJN she was working in a full-time construction job a decade ago.
“I would come home and feel really unfulfilled. I felt like there was a part of me that was missing,” she said.
As a creative outlet, she started making jewellery in her bedroom.
“I used to pack up my little car and drive around Victoria and go to craft markets everywhere because I made all the jewellery [myself],” she told The AJN.
“My jewellery would always do quite well at these markets.”
After some time Ash managed to get a spot in the SO:ME Space at the South Melbourne Market, which set her on a path to “pursue this a little bit more seriously”, she said.
The SO:ME Space is dedicated to creative small businesses that are five years old or less and businesses have the space for four-week stints.
Ash’s stall at the South Melbourne Market was such a success that she was asked to stay on.
“And then they asked me to stay on again, and I was there for a total of six months, and at the end of that, I thought, you know what, I’ve got enough in the bank now to put it straight back in the business,” she said.
Ash then opened up her first store in Melbourne’s Chapel street, her flagship store. She has since opened three more across Melbourne and Sydney with the fifth set to open this week in Melbourne’s Chadstone shopping centre.
She attributes a lot of her success to the innovative materials she uses to make her jewellery.
“There was a massive gap in the jewellery industry,” she explained, being high-quality jewellery at an affordable price.
Ash noted that there were two options in the jewellery industry – expensive solid gold pieces or what she calls “landfill jewellery”.
She defines “landfill jewellery” as the type you buy for a one-off event. “It’s not going to last you and you’re gonna throw it away.”
Ash uses a thick layer of gold pressure bonded to the inside metal, so it acts like pure gold.
“It doesn’t rust, doesn’t discolour but you’re not paying solid gold pricing because there is an inner layer of silver,” she said.
The stand-out tagline of the business is gold and silver jewellery that won’t tarnish or discolour, however it comes at an affordable price point, with Ash even saying people can buy her products with “babysitting money”.
She said that a customer came in to have a necklace repaired that she had bought when Ash was still making the pieces out of her bedroom. It had not tarnished or discoloured at all, and, most importantly, had not gone into landfill.
Ash also told The AJN that she runs her business with her strong Jewish values in mind.
“I feel like you need to represent your identity and Judaism in a positive way. So the way I Âcommunicate with my staff, they all know where I’m from,” she said.
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