by Marina Pecorino, The Point co-editor

Jared Karnes of Onetribe took home this year’s Creative Innovator Award for his “Topo” design ear weights. I had the pleasure of interviewing him about his customer-centric business model, love of metallurgy and gemology, and the design to manufacturing process.

Marina Pecorino: Tell us a little about the history and philosophy of Onetribe.

Jared Karnes: I started Onetribe at the end of 2002 after realizing there was an open niche for a retail store with a well organized, user-friendly website and jewelry more unique than what was available wholesale. I had been looking for personal jewelry and became frustrated with the selection of styles and materials, and how the industry seemed to be stuck in the 90’s concerning web best practices.

After several years of production in Indonesia, I set up a personal workshop to prototype, use new materials, and troubleshoot issues my artisans were having. This allowed me to teach new techniques and solutions to keep our production running smoothly. I had been coordinating design and sourcing materials for years, but the new direction of putting my hands on materials and troubleshooting processes became a turning point for both myself and the business. I fell in love with the meditative act of making, and particularly with the process and history behind creating artwork from stone. At its peak, Onetribe had many employees, products, and projects both at home and abroad. As I became more invested in making jewelry with my own hands, it was challenging to manage all of those things, and I began to let them go. My philosophy going forward is one of embracing simplicity and play. I intend to cultivate joy in myself and others by using my work to honor the time people spend changing their bodies.

MP: What was the inspiration behind the “Topo” design? What makes this design unique?

JK: Topo is inspired by mountains and rivers, and how we translate those environments into maps. I became obsessed with how to make a river valley with elevations and water that looked as if it was a three-dimensional section from a topographical map. It was also exciting to create something way outside of current body jewelry trends.

A few details that make Topo unique are the rear set stone, a hallmark of mine over the last few years, and the stone shape itself. The stone is tallest at the center of the valley and lowest toward the edges as it disappears into the background. This gives depth and helps reinforce the visual feel of a river. I put a lot of thought into how the design would appear from multiple angles and it is particularly well suited for my recent experimentation with doublets, laminations of two or more stones to create a new aesthetic. That process worked remarkably well for creating a water effect.

MP: Can you tell us about the development and manufacturing process for the “Topo” design? Approximately how many hours go into crafting one pair?

JK: Most of the work for a style like Topo happens before any metal is melted. The process  of refining a design from drawing to paper model, handmade metal model, 3D printed model, mold, and then final metal master took months and it’s still not finished. I’m redesigning the setting due to some production issues and that’s why  I only had a handful of pairs  for Conference. Because the bulk of the work is done up front, an estimate can be misleading. With that said, depending on whether it’s the small or large size, the hardness or difficulty   of the stone, and whether it is a solid stone or   a doublet, the stone carving process takes between one and four hours for a pair. The setting takes on average an hour and a half, and clean up about the same. This works out to between four and seven hours of hands-on time for each pair, not counting the pre-production work.

MP: Many of the items available from Onetribe are made to order and customized for the wearer. Can you explain your rationale for this business model?

JK: There are two reasons for this. The first is that I like things to fit correctly and be special for the customer. If I can easily accommodate sizing or aesthetic specifications, then that customer has helped create their own jewelry. The second reason is that it’s a risk making stock using time-consuming processes and materials where every cut is unique. I can make ten pairs of plugs or weights this week, and two or ten may sell. It may be a month before any sell. It takes a predictable income to run a business and make sure that bills get paid on time. Relying on the unpredictable nature of one person with the right aesthetic, size requirements, and budget to find and buy that one product is not a stable business model. That model is better suited to businesses who are buying wholesale or mass manufacturing.

There is a big caveat here, and it’s that running a standing production queue for years on end is mentally and physically tiring because there is always something due. Each order is paid in advance, and thus the queue is also a huge business liability. It’s not a perfect system and I have some ideas for refining it. I would like to move to more of a balance between stock and custom work and involve customers in selecting what styles, materials, sizes, and price points are stocked and available for immediate purchase.

MP: Your website says that you’re “perfectly content being nerds about beautiful woods and stones and coming up with new ways to make them wearable.” What is your favorite material to work with and why? What are some of the characteristics of the materials you choose?

JK: Choosing a single material has become difficult as I use stone in different ways beyond simple solid plugs. Recently I have been super into  searching  out  specific colors in stone. I get excited about combinations  of bright colors like Chrysoprase (think mineral-pool green) and Turkish Purple Jade. I also get weak in the knees for pastels, and I have been looking for rare colors like pale pink, peach, lavender, and cool grays in Botswana Agate. Nodular agates like Botswana are unique because they tend to occur in small pieces that look like eggs, and due to the exterior skin it’s not possible to tell what’s going on until it is cut. Searching for a specific color means cutting open many nodules to see what I’ve got to work with, and then narrowing down what’s useful now or inspiring for later. I cut down over 20 nodules to find the handful of small pastel pieces I used in a recent pair of my Moon hoops. I’ve started to think about stones as a palette and not just individual entities, and it’s opening up some exciting possibilities for future work.

MP: At the 2016 APP Conference & Expo, you took home the Creative Innovator Award for your “Ghost in the Shell” design. Did that win influence your submission for this year at all?

JK: It did! Up to that point, I had been mostly focusing on technical work such as new setting methods and modernized historical jewelry. Ghost in the Shell was one of the first designs to reflect my personal aesthetic. It is not ornate, but it has thoughtful attention to line quality and light play and huge personality when you pay attention. I actually did not plan to enter anything that year, but someone at Conference suggested I submit GitS while I was setting up my booth. Winning the Creative Innovator Award for that style was confirmation that my design aesthetic is valid and that I shouldn’t worry so much about what’s trending. I had no idea how Topo was going to be received this year but I decided if I am going to continue to try and do new things, I gotta go for it despite my insecurities.

MP: As a well-known and established jewelry company, do you have any words of wisdom you’d like to share with up-and-coming artisan jewelers in our industry?

JK: I’ll never forget Keith Alexander telling me right at the beginning of my business that it wasn’t worth it, because the industry was too saturated. I took this statement to mean “do it better, or there’s no reason to do it at all.” He may not have meant it that way, but a few years later he congratulated me on building something special and that made me very happy. I used to have the opinion that saturation is killing the jewelry industry, then I realized that a more accurate assessment is that saturation only happens when there’s little to get excited about. So please, make things! Bring it, but bring originality and do it well so we can all get hyped on creativity and innovation, and push ourselves and each other onward and upward.