Rising Stars: Meet Victoria Meyers of South Bay/Harbor Gateway

Today we’d like to introduce you to Victoria Meyers.

Hi Victoria, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
It’s been a long and winding road, and I’m not sure how to condense it into one coherent narrative, but here’s my best attempt at a “short version”:

In 2019 I left an eight year long abusive marriage with two small kids, no work experience besides sporadically teaching craft classes at a local homeschool co-op and a very, very niche Etsy shop, and what I now know is severe C-PTSD.

Obviously, I had to figure out what to do with my life, and since I had spent so many years as a stay-at-home mom keeping everyone at arm’s length to try and hide the abuse, I didn’t have a career to “go back to.” I was COMPLETELY starting from scratch (with 80% of the parenting time, no reliable childcare options, all of the household expenses to keep up with, and all of the debt and bills in my name only). In my first few months as a single mom I started two businesses:

Private, in-person sewing lessons and a handmade healing crystal jewelry business. It was a LOT of juggling, but slowly, those two gigs (plus my Etsy shop) were coming together into an income that covered the gap between the child support my ex husband was finally paying and my family’s expenses. By March 2020, I had my first week of making a full 1/4 of our monthly budget all by myself! And then, we all know what happened in March of 2020.

So, I stopped teaching sewing lessons entirely and focused on the jewelry business. Honestly, I had never meant to start a jewelry business (I have a blog post that tells the whole story), but through the pandemic I posted limited product drops on Instagram, hosted live sales, and built up my website and online presence. By time we were allowed to go back outside again, I was getting accepted into all of the bigger craft markets that I had always dreamed of selling at: Patchwork, Renegade, UniqueLA…

In 2022 I decided to focus on expanding my business: I wrote and self-published two books, expanded my product line, added in a wholesale platform and retail partnerships (I also decided to finally enroll in school to finish my Bachelor’s degree), and then… my ENTIRE life crumbled to pieces over the course of 2023. My ex husband started creating some new issues that required an emergency filing for sole custody (I got it!) and caused massive, unexpected financial strain, multiple large investments I made to expand didn’t work out (including a consignment partner that both didn’t pay out commissions AND didn’t send back my inventory), I had all of my craft fair inventory stolen from my car, AND THEN, a week before Christmas, my car was totaled in a hit-and-run.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the toll this all took on my mental and physical health made it difficult to give my business the time and energy it needed to be successful, and things slowed down a LOT.

But I wasn’t willing to just let it go. Not after I had rebuilt my life from nothing just a few years before. I cut out every possible expense that I could, pared down my offerings to the core collection that I started with, stopped doing in-person markets and seeking out retail partnerships, prioritized my wholesale customers, and built up my email marketing while I mainly focused on resting and recovering from everything that I had been hit with.

In that period of rest and contraction, new opportunities started finding me: I got an internship in social media marketing that helped rekindle my interest in writing blogs and creating social media content, I applied to teach at the Craftcation conference (another lifelong dream!), and most recently, the custom pin listings on my Etsy shop have taken off like crazy.

Today I find myself in a season that, in some ways, feels like an echo of when I first started. However, it doesn’t feel like I did all that work just to wind up back in the same place. I may still be cobbling my income together through multiple creative pursuits and not have a clear “career” or plan for the future, but I’ve learned so much, and grown into a person that knows that I can carve an unconventional path in life, stay aligned with my priorities, and keep going even when circumstances aren’t ideal.

I’m so proud of everything that I’ve built, and that even after all I’ve been through (that brought me SO close to giving up just two years ago!), I’m not just still going, but starting to grow again!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not!

If anything, my entire career has been struggles and challenges: it was both born out of an escape from DV, thrown right into navigating a pandemic, only to be hit with economic uncertainty and several consecutive major life crises right as things went back to “normal.”

However, every challenge has held its own important lessons, and it’s because of these challenges that I’ve been able to develop the flexibility and resilience to keep going, adapting my business as needed to ensure that I can keep going, no matter what life throws at me.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My jewelry brand is all about making every day magic and empowering my customers to intentionally tailor their jewelry to the energy that they want to embody.

While my jewelry pieces do feature natural healing crystals (each piece comes with a card describing the healing properties of the stone it’s made with!), I’ve focused on creating pieces that bridge the gap between “fine jewelry” and “crystal store.”

My pieces are light, airy, minimalist, and don’t restrict themselves to one particular age group or aesthetic niche.

I believe that everybody can benefit from crystal energies in their everyday lives, so I’ve carefully designed my jewelry to easily fit into every day life by designing lightweight, easy to style pieces, and I use demi-fine hardware (solid sterling silver and 14k gold filled) to ensure quality and longevity (no worries that they’ll turn green!).

When I meet a customer who is new to crystals, or unsure of what they need, I am happy to walk them through my offerings to help guide them to the piece that will best support them in what they need.

I’m most proud of my Zodiac collection: I spent the entire 2020-2021 zodiac year researching each sign and curating a collection of five stones that best complemented and supported their unique strengths and challenges, releasing each style with the new moon. That was by far my most ambitious project and I love how the whole collection came out and is still a staple on my website.

What were you like growing up?
Well, back in the 90’s little girls weren’t diagnosed with ADHD, so I dealt with a lot of the “you’re so smart/get such good grades but you’re not applying yourself” without any guidance or support on HOW to do that. I was also homeschooled, so I had a LOT of time to read and pursue my multitude of creative hobbies.

By middle school, I was deeply enamored with the fiber arts (knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing), and by my teens I was selling my handmade works on MySpace and eventually Etsy.

The fact that I ended up where I am now… totally makes sense (there was just a detour of trying really hard to become a “normal” wife and mom in my early 20s).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.victoriaannmeyers.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/shop.victoriaannmeyers
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victoriaannmeyers

Image Credits
All photos by Victoria Ann Meyers