South Gate resident Xitlaly Gutierrez shares how she started her small business and the struggles that come with owning one.

“It kind of goes back to when I was little and making my own jewelry with the kits you would find at Target,” Gutierrez said, “It is just something that I’ve always wanted to do.”

Gutierrez started her small business at the beginning of the pandemic and named it Luvrs Jewelry. She saw that many people were owning small businesses and got inspired to start her business journey.

When Gutierrez just started her business, she didn’t get many sales as her sales were from locals, so didn’t put a lot of effort into her work.

In late January 2022, she decided to take her business seriously and re-vamp her account.

Gutierrez said, “I’m excited to be back with new accessories I’ve been putting together these past few months,” Guiterrez said about her first Instagram post on Luvrs Jewelry.

“With this launch, I hope you all will love it as much as I do and that these pieces will make you feel confident and empowered.”

She also made a Depop and earned a couple of sales from it.

The small business owner decided to make a TikTok video to promote her jewelry designs.

Gutierrez’s first TikTok video was her showing a Harry Styles-inspired necklace that she made, it got a total of 4,117 views and 593 likes.

“Even though that’s not too many views or likes, I got excited that people were liking my jewelry,” she said, There were only a few comments but they were saying that they wanted to buy and that made me super excited.”

Then there was the Tiktok video that really blew up and got her business to reach a bigger audience.

Gutierrez said, “I remember there was a K-pop song that was trending at the time, so I used it in my video and put some trendy hashtags and it just blew up.”

The video received 448.1k views and 101.9k likes as well as over 200 comments.

It happened really fast out of nowhere. It was exciting, but I got overwhelmed super fast,” Gutierrez said.

“I reached the audience that I wanted to reach and tons of people began messaging me asking if they could buy, but most just clicked on my Depop account and bought straight from there.”

Gutierrez said that people loved her jewelry and they liked how some pieces were inspired by Vivienne Westwood a fashion designer and liked her Nana, an Anime, inspired piece too.

The names of her jewelry pieces were also very catchy as sometimes she would get names from song lyrics or the ideas just popped into her head.

“Some jewelry I made because I needed a necklace to match with my outfit,” Gutierrez said.

“Honestly I thought owning a small business would help distract myself since I had no job and wasn’t going to school,” Gutierrez said, “But it was really difficult and It really affected my mental health.”

“I really wanted all my jewelry to be great quality, but the supplies have to be good quality,” she added, “It was expensive. The money that I was getting from the sale was on hold through Depop.”

“Everything just happened so fast and I wasn’t prepared. I also had no support from my family. They thought it was a waste of time,” Gutierrez said.

“I had the time, but I didn’t have the money to continue and my family was no help,” she added, “I really started to question if I made the right choice in starting a business and I felt like I couldn’t keep up.”

Gutierrez decided to delete her Depop account and sell only through Instagram.

“Having a small business did affect my mental health because for a moment I lost passion for something that I was so excited to do,” the small business owner said

“I think that the small businesses that I see online don’t talk about this part of owning one, I still love making jewelry and my business is still doing well,” she said.

“In the future, I hope I can get more help so that I can make Luvrs Jewelry better,” Guiterrez added.