Interview with Nicolas Tranchant: Carving the Future with High End Jewellery
Nicolas Tranchant
Nicolas a former French Engineer who made the conscious decision to quit his life in France and
uproot everything to follow and be with his wife in Mexico.
There Nicolas started a Business, that business has grown to be a highly successful
online jewellery business that proposes its own original designs and custom-made jewellery.
Vivalatina is setting the bar extremely high and is an example for other online business owners to follow in their foot steps..
Interview with Nicolas Tranchant: Carving the Future with High End Jewellery
Nicolas glad to be sharing your amazing story today on Business Digest Magazine. It’s certainly from what I’ve heard, been a roller coaster ride indeed!
Can you tell us a bit about your background before you got into Business?
I am French and graduated as a mechanical Engineer in 2004. After doing a period of practice for my studies in Mexico, I decided to travel more as a backpacker in Australia and Latin America for a while.
This brought me to learn Portuguese while I was surfing in Rio de Janeiro, where I stayed 5 months and to meet my girlfriend in Mexico back in 2007. I went back to France in 2008 where I lived with my girlfriend and got married with her.
While she was a doctor in Mexico, she could not work in France, because of French laws. So, in 2009 we tried to set up an online jewellery business, reselling silver jewellery imported from Mexico. This never took off, but the idea stuck in my mind.
In 2012, my wife got fed up with not being able to work as a doctor and decided to go back to Mexico.
I was in love. I quit everything. My entrepreneurship journey had started.
Entrepreneurship can be a tough and lonely place, have you ever faced such times?
Yes, for sure.
I arrived in July 2012 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and started from the ground this online jewellery project I had in my mind.
I had no previous experience in entrepreneurship, no knowledge in marketing and no money to fund me. In November, my wife who was then working as a doctor got pregnant and my business was not making any profit.
I felt alone, with a huge amount of pressure on my shoulders and no easy way in sight.
To get out of this situation, I had to work my way and make this business idea profitable. After many failures, it took me 3 years to finally be profitable.
How does Vivalatina stand out from its competitors?
We are in a business niche. We specialized in high-end jewellery made of gold, silver and gemstone and custom-made designs.
We are a pure player business making unique jewellery while our main online competitors online offer standardized jewellery.
We have our own jewellery workshop and manage 100% of the jewellery making in-house, while big jewellery brands have subcontractors making their jewellery designs.
We are a digital company that focus on personal attention, as the business owner, I talk directly to my clients and follow every single project in our workshop, so the attention gave to our client is top notch.
Moreover, I always get back in touch with my clients by phone or email in less than 24 hours, sometimes in less than 10 minutes, so there are amazed to see the level of attention given to their project, being in the US or France with someone in Mexico is working live on their project.
You’ve told us about struggles on your journey but what struggles has Vivalatina faced and how has it overcome them?
The biggest business struggle was to find clients at the beginning. I had no background in marketing, I did not know how to handle that.
I had no money to spend either to promote the business.
The easiest way seemed to me to learn Search Engine Optimization to do it by myself, which I did as it was free, but this takes an incredible amount of time. Learning, testing and then improving requires years of effort.
After learning online on my own since July 2012, I finally got hit by Google’s penalty in March 2013 and understood I was on the wrong path.
I started to read books on the subject, follow forums and specialized blogs about SEO, and to attend webinars to improve my knowledge and skills in SEO.
It took me years but I made it. We achieved more than 55 000 unique visitors per month on our French online boutique in 2020. We plan to expand quickly duplicating our website in English, focusing on the US market.
While I was reselling 60 euro silver jewellery back in 2013, our average product price in 2020 was 660 euros, as we were able to generate more targeted traffic and expand our service from reselling cheap jewellery to making high-end jewellery designs with the appropriate marketing and service.
Why did you start your own business, what was the main reason?
Back in 2009 in France, my Mexican girlfriend could not work as a general practitioner in France. So, we were looking for a way to generate more cash flow.
I had read the book The four hour work week from Tim Ferris so setting up an online business seemed a great idea to me.
As we had contact of silver jewellery providers in Taxco, Mexico, we thought this would be the easiest way to start a business for us.
Finally, as I was working full-time as an engineer and my wife was not interested in sales online, the project never took off and we barely made three sales online with this first trial.
So, when I arrived in Mexico in 2012, I wanted to try again to set up this business idea working full-time on it. That’s what I did.
What goals do you have and where do you see yourself in the future?
Having started from nothing and having my own jewellery workshop and a team of four working with me, I am very happy of what I could build.
Now I am looking to duplicate our business in the US to double our revenue, which will allow me to set up my own team in-house for marketing. As we are still a small company, I do a lot of tasks and I converted myself in the bottleneck of the business.
So, I am looking to grow the business to pass on my task to my employees and manage them in spite of doing so much on my own.
I plan to double our revenue by the end of 2022 and reach the 500 000 dollar milestone in 2025.
Who or what has been your main guidance in business when things get tough?
Since I started, each time I was facing difficulties I was thinking in throwing the towel and do something else. But it had already been so difficult for me to get there, quitting everything in France, switching my career, having nothing but my family and my business project online that I could not see any other solution than succeeding.
Moreover, I had a baby now and starting something new from zero was not an easy task at all neither.
So, each time I focused on the main trouble I had, sales and marketing my business and focused on following two marketing gurus: Neil Patel and Brian Dean thanks to whom I have learned so much.
Which Successful entrepreneurs do you look up to most in business and hope to one day emulate the same level of success?
As an engineer, I am fascinated by Elon Musk’s work and industries. This man makes me believe that anything is possible with enough drive and persistence. Of course, I can not even imagine following his path, but he leads the way of people wanted to achieve more.
Brian Dean is an SEO expert that I also follow, I follow his blog and registered for his webinar. His business success is also a source of inspiration for any marketer online, so of course, I try to follow his path the best I can.
How do you learn and stay on top of business trends? Do you read books, have a mentor or business advisor, or undergo training courses?
One of the first big changes I made when starting my business was to start reading self-improvement books. Which I did not when I was working as an employee.
But facing so many obstacles and failing so much in my project, I needed help and I found many helpful books to read and grow as a business owner.
I read one book per month, that can be focused on marketing, health, investment or businessmen biography. I read to be sharper in my own business and open my mind to new ideas.
I do register for training courses online when require. Up to now, I have followed two training courses online for SEO and one for stock investment.
Could you provide us with you best 3 pieces of advice for any entrepreneur starting out in business?
You are not born an entrepreneur, you become an entrepreneur the hard way. Everyone fails before succeeding. When you fail, just try again harder.
Being an entrepreneur is taking action, not being better or great. Taking action each time it is required is the best way to achieve your goals.
Not taking action in your life is the easiest and the biggest mistake you could ever make. All others can easily be fixed up.
What legacy will you leave to the world?
I would be pleased to be able to pass on my business to my son in the future, it would be fun but not that important.
I would be pleased to show that following the path of love can lead to better success in life and business.
Keep up with Nicolas via his website or social media channel;
Website - https://vivalatina-shop.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-tranchant-1006461/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/VIVALATINAFR-305910695762
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vivalatinajewelry/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/NicolasTrancha4
Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.fr/thevivalatina
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/NicolasTranchant/
