by Kendra Jane B., The Point Co-Editor
Auris Jewelry was a first time vendor on this year exposition floor and as a new Gold company from Russia, it was great to see that they had entered the Magdustrial for an innovators award. What is even better as first time attendees and entrant is winning the technical award for this year.
Kendra Jane B: Can you introduce yourself and tell us what brought you to APP this year?
Auris Jewelry: Auris Jewelry’s core is three people. Myself and Vlad-1 are the owners of St Scalpelburg Piercing Boutique, with the intention of creating a new piercing jewelry line for its customers, and Vlad-2, who is a jeweler and owns a goldsmith manufacturer. Together we want to make this world more shiny. Where to start if not APP, the world’s biggest and best.
KJB: How long has Auris been a jewelry company?
AJ: We started looking for a jeweler to make our designs in 2014. We found Vlad-2 in 2015, so we can say we’ve done piercing since that time. But series models only started in 2016.
KJB: What was it like breaking into the gold market in Russia? Tell us about your company.
AJ: Besides the Advanced Journal of Surgical Pathology (AJSP), there is nothing high end in Russia. Only cheap gold designs from the ‘90s which are externally threaded, wrongly sized, and not even nickel free. Since 2013 St Scalpelburg has offered Russian people jewelry from BVLA, but long wait times and higher price points were very difficult in our market. We decided to build our own brand which can fulfill our customers’ demands in about one month and it works. As you can see, not only for our shop customers, but for other shops all over the world!
KJB: Why is it so important for piercers in your area to have access to high end jewelry?
AJ: Well, besides safety and quality, selling good jewelry is crucial for our industry. The more money we make, the more money we spend on advertising our professional industry ideas, and the bigger educational conferences we can hold, etc.
KJB: What inspired you to create the Magdustrial?
AJ: Well, the idea belongs to Vlad-2, our jeweler. He says that when you are focused on a specific area, you try to project onto this field everything you encounter—whether those are rocks from a specific place or technological newcomings. One day Vlad got his hands on a pair of neodymium magnets, they were small enough to be feasible for applying to piercing and strong enough to keep tension. Some time after, he discussed the idea with Vlad-1 and me. We decided that it might be an interesting idea to upgrade our existing chaindustrial with magnets instead of separate chains. The idea was so fresh and fascinating, so we started working on the design. You’ve all seen what it became!
KJB: Tell us about the process of creating this piece?
AJ: It was pretty much the same as any other piece. Interactions, one by one, until we found a design suitable for magnets and it looked bright enough.
KJB: What are your future plans for your company?
AJ: Ohoho, there are tons! We’ve got a number of ideas for new jewelry styles we want to introduce to the public. We want to cover all countries where people work with high end, so we are pretty much on the road all this year.
Of course, we are quite a young company now, so we are establishing business processes first. But the biggest dream is to move all the manufacturing, employees, and facilities to a nice warm place like Thailand or Bali.
KJB: What is the piercing industry like in Russia compared to North America or European markets?
AJ: It is only just starting to grow. We have only 10–15 shops ordering high end titanium on a regular basis at the moment. The general public is still not ready to pay that much for a piercing; although we did a huge educational job by mass-advertising with St Scalpelburg the past five years and now people are starting to believe that they can sell high end jewelry and earn money from it.
I would say it is pretty similar to South America at the moment, but we are growing fast.
KJB: Can you tell us a bit about your involvement with the RuAPP and the conference you just had?
AJ: Of course! Auris Jewelry, along with Industrial Strength Russia, became corporate and administrative sponsors of the first and second RuAPP conference in Moscow. The first was held in January, second in August and this time we involved foreign speakers and attendees. Thanks a lot to APP who generously sponsored Brian Skellie and Cody Vaughn coming to RuAPP! The conference had 105 attendees which shows us that piercers in Russia are eager to learn and make Russian piercing all it can be!
Regarding involvement, RuAPP, Auris Jewelry, St Scalpelburg and the Russian piercing industry in general are mixed into one because we (Vlad Bodmodov and I) are doing all these activities at the same time.
KJB: Can we hope to see you next year?
AJ: You kidding? We would love to be there again! Next time we will be better prepared.
KJB: What is one piece of advice you would have for aspiring jewelry makers?
AJ: I’ve got a little bit different type of answer for that. After APP and RuAPP we went to Brazilian GEP where we met RARO jewelry who had their debut at the Conference. Lukas, their designer, told us that our jewelry along with Charly Pastrana’s Sacred Symbols, has become an inspiration for them.
I was so happy to know that we inspired those people to create a neat product! For me, inspiring people is one of the best things in the world.
Therefore, if I wanted to give advice to people who want to make jewelry themselves… well, do what you want to wear for yourself and don’t copy. When it comes from your heart you can easily see the difference. That’s why I love what Charly from Sacred Symbols does. The rest just takes time.
Hope to see you soon at Conferences all over the world and have you in the Auris Legion one day. Together we can wipe styleless jewelry from this world.