Morena of Kodes
Have you always been a maker. If not how did you get here? Having had Alopecia Universalis (an illness which causes all your hair, eyebrows and eyelashes to fall) since I was 12 years old, I started Kodes in 2015 from the need to express myself through jewellery, something I realised I had been doing for years, as a way to make up for not being able to express myself through (the lack of) my hair.
Kodes was also born as a rebellion towards fashion homogenisation, something I have experienced throughout my upbringing in Italy.
Is making your full time job?
As well as being a maker, I run Morena Fiore Digital, where I create WordPress websites and I work as an SEO consultant. Working for myself and working from home allows me to attend to both businesses when I need to. I have to juggle all this with a family, but I am lucky my husband is the house chef!
It just gets tricky in the Christmas season as I get so busy with Kodes, I barely can do any work with my other business!
I love putting together the product for the first time. One thing is having an idea, doing some drawings, but it's a completely different story to finally seeing the product come to life!
What does a typical day look like for you? After school drop off, breakfast and meditation, I usually start the day by painting some wooden beads. I then attend mainly to MF Digital tasks and reply to a few Kodes emails in between tasks. The afternoon is instead dedicated to order packing. The evening it's light admin around Kodes. It never ends! My desk is split almost in two, with the product making on one end and the laptop on the other. Then I'm surrounded by furniture holding all the different materials! A tiny but intense background I often blur on clients' video calls - although they all love to see it when eventually they do!
My favourite product is the Blue Lapis Lazuli & Lava beads Aromatherapy Essential Oil Diffuser Glasses chains, shortlisted and nominated for prestigious awards. I'm bringing them to my first trade show at the end of Feb and I'm just so excited about them!
What are the biggest challenges you face as an independent maker? Any company hires a variety of people, each with different skills. It's so hard as an independent maker to have to learn and put in practice all those skills! For example selling doesn't come natural to me, so I have to work extra hard to that. It's so easy to make products, get lost in the creative process, but it's the post production, so the photography, the editing, the copy writing AND the selling that can really be a block for us.
I try and bring Art Deco to modern jewellery. I focus on statement pieces to encourage anyone (also through Alopecia awareness) to express themselves and their creativity through jewellery!
What have you got from being a part of the Crafty Fox community? I have learned so much from talking to other makers and I enjoy being part of sharing all this knowledge back, helping each other. It feels there's never competition or enemies at markets!
See more of Morena’s work at www.kodes.me.uk
