Recently, I attended a spring party hosted by a long time friend; she does not have her ears pierced.
She was wearing a pair of clip earrings I gave her as a Birthday present. I could tell she liked the earrings and enjoyed how they felt as she moved. With her luscious dark hair the little crystals and pearls dangle with lovely shine and sparkle that did not go unnoticed when she greeted her guests into the party. As I mingled with other guests munching on delicious finger foods, I could not help to hear one of her guest commenting the following: "Lovely earrings, did you finally get your ears pierced?" My friend smiled and explained to her guest that the earrings where clips. Her guest got close to my friends face and exclaimed: "Wow, are those clip earrings? Where did you get them?" Being close, I knew what was to come … my friend quickly came, grabbed me and introduced me to her friend.
"She has a website full of them!" my friend explained. Her guest immediately got close to examine my own earrings and pointed out "But you do not wear clip earrings, how come you make them?" Well, this is a question I get every time I talk about my website to people. The reason is simple: I design earrings for pierced and non-pierced wearers because there are people who have pierced ears and there are people who do not have their ears pierced.
I started to design for non-pierced wearers in mind after having several of my closest friends complain that they could not find any fashionable earrings. This brought up my own past frustrations, having a daughter who was afraid of piercing her ears when she was small, I had in the past searched for cute clip earrings that she could wear, I had had no success.
I got intrigued and decided to do more research. After futile searches I found my friend’s complaints about finding contemporary clip earrings for adults were true, just as it was finding clip earrings for my young daughter.
Yes, clip earrings are still available, but the gamut of clip earrings styles is small - mostly limited to vintage clips which can be somehow large and heavy - not something my daughter could wear when she was small, nor a style that is preferred by some of my friends. Now, don't get me wrong, vintage clips are very fashionable and beautiful very popular choice especially with people who like vintage and appreciate their style. However, when it came time to find small, fun, appropriate children clip earrings; dangling, light chandeliers for my friends; or simply funky and cute clip for teenagers, the choices became much narrower.
Are clip earrings a minority? I guess they are, but that is beside the point. Pierced or non-pierced I believe we deserve to have choices to fit our same fashion: to look stylish and beautiful. Why should anyone be deprived of wearing up-to-date fashionable earrings styles, just because they can’t or choose not to pierce their ears? This in fact, became the concept of my website: Crazy4clipons.com where I decided to offer earrings to anyone who loved them as much as I do.
This website started by word of mouth among my friends, it then expanded to their friends and to other customers who started asking for more specifics:
Could I design small classic clip pearl earrings? Could I make earrings using beads and gems? What about sterling silver or gold filled clip earrings? Did I carry romantic styles available for bridal parties? How about pierced-like looking styles? Could I make them in soft colors? Could I make them in bold colors? And the suggestions kept coming … what about comfort? Could I make them with screw backs? Could I provide cushions for them? This made me realize how this community craves for style, variety and comfort. Yes, clip wearers look for individuality in their earrings as they do in their clothes. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. After all this is not unusual on other areas - how many people have the same frustrations with clothes that come in particular sizes but not on others?
Now, coming back to our earlier party; after my friend's guest had examined the earrings I was wearing she proceeded to ask. "So, is your website only for clip earrings?" I smiled. This is another question I get quite often. I find it interesting that people think I would cater to one set of individuals and exclude the second. I proceeded to explain that my website was in fact built to accommodate everybody and while the name is targeted to clip wearers, it's main objective is to provide beautiful comfortable earrings to all, regardless of them having pierced ears or not.
Being satisfied with my answers, she asked "So, I could order those same earrings
