Art passion fuels jewelry designs

MATERIAL DIFFERENCES: Loren Hope Designs LLC co-founder Loren Barham in her North Providence studio. She started the business in North Carolina and moved to Rhode Island last year. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
MATERIAL DIFFERENCES: Loren Hope Designs LLC co-founder Loren Barham in her North Providence studio. She started the business in North Carolina and moved to Rhode Island last year. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

If there were ever a business that grew naturally from the seeds of inborn talent, a passion for design and seizing life’s opportunities, Loren Hope Designs LLC is it.
“I’ve done art my entire life,” said Loren Barham, who “fell in love with working with metals” when she studied fine arts at East Carolina University. She also fell in love with fellow ECU student Aaron Barham, and the couple moved to England when he was stationed at Lakenheath Air Force Base in Bury St. Edmunds.
“I started ordering beads and stones and jewelry components and having them shipped to my APO address,” said Barham. “I was doing jewelry design on my dining room table.”
When the couple returned home to Apex, N.C., in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, the beads and stones got more space in a room designated as a home-design studio. It was a part-time endeavor and Barham occasionally sold jewelry that brought in $200 or $300.
Her full-time job was in marketing, graphic design and as the overseer of safety regulations for her father-in-law’s painting company. Her husband also worked in the family business.
“All that time, I was always itching to do my jewelry,” said Barham.
Then came one of those forks in the road.
“One day a girlfriend of mine who managed a local boutique said the owner wanted to see my work, so I gave her some of my jewelry,” said Barham. “She came back and said the owner wanted it all, to send an invoice. It was about $2,000 worth of jewelry. That really fueled me. I thought, ‘I’m really onto something.’ ”
She kept a day job, along with her jewelry making, and in 2009 began working with a showroom in Atlanta that placed her jewelry in stores. “That was a big step,” she said. “I still hand-made all the jewelry and when I got really busy, my mom would come over and help me out. She was always artistic, she draws and paints.”
Barham and her husband later built a house in Pittsboro, N.C. In the new house, she started exploring a new technique for her jewelry-making that ignited the creative fire. She ordered stones and other materials from Rhode Island. One of her suppliers suggested she come up and look around, which she did in November 2011.
“For four days, he drove me around and introduced me to various vendors in the area. I think he saw something in me, that I was hungry for design and for growing my business,” said Barham. “I thought Rhode Island was awesome. The area is full of people who know how to work with steel, how to make tools, who understand how to work with metals,” she said. “There are importers who import stones. … It’s all right here.”
She contracted some of the jewelry assembly work to people in Rhode Island.
“I did a fall 2012 look book that was really on point with the trends,” she said of the collection of photographs that captures a certain look or style that highlights the products. “We did it on location in an old farmhouse in Pittsboro and the model was one of my sister’s friends. That photo shoot, that look book and that collection put us on the map.”
Loren Hope Designs had hit critical mass.
“After Christmas season, on New Year’s Day, we made the 13-hour drive up to Rhode Island, stayed for a week and designed our spring line,” said Barham. “We were driving around to the different vendors and seeing how close everything was. I was imagining how much we could do if we were up here,” she said. “We decided we had to move to Rhode Island.”
On Feb. 15, 2013, they rented a 750-square-foot studio in Lorraine Mills in Pawtucket.
“By September we were bursting at the seams, so we rented 1,500 square feet on the lower level and that’s where the production is now,” she said. Her husband is director of operations.
“In the first quarter of 2014, we quadrupled our business over the first quarter of 2013,” she said. Her designs have been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, Seventeen, Self, Redbook, Weddings and the San Francisco Chronicle.
The jewelry is sold in boutiques and specialty shops across the U.S. and internationally.
“What makes my jewelry unique is that it’s bold and colorful. I use a lot of unexpected color pairings, like purple and orange or chartreuse with peach,” said Barham.
“The pieces stand out because they’re put together by hand, the way costume jewelry was done 50 years ago,” she said. “All the little rhinestones are hand-soldered in the style of vintage costume jewelry.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Loren Hope Designs LLC
OWNERS: Loren Barham and Aaron Barham
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Jewelry design
LOCATION: 558 Mineral Spring Ave., Lorraine Mills, Pawtucket
EMPLOYEES: 10 full time, one part time
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2005 in Apex, N.C., moved to Rhode Island in February 2013
ANNUAL REVENUE: WND

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