Welcome To The Journey Of AVØRA

In 2012 Kaja Ringert, founder of Avora Time started her first business start-up, Lycka, a yoghurt and vegan ice cream company in Hamburg. By then, her close friend Cathrin Hansen had moved to London and was helping her with design work on an ad-hoc basis.  

In October 2016 the two friends decided to channel their common love for design and travel into beautiful, unique timepieces – resulting in the launch of Avøra, which suitably translates to ‘A Vision of Real Adventure’. For a year they focused on the product design and quality until they were fully satisfied with the collection. 

Originally, they wanted a world map design on their watches so they travelled to several manufactures in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to present the idea and have them produced. As soon as they had found a manufacturer to start creating the prototypes, they then stumbled across a startup on Instagram who just started producing watches that looked identical to the designs they had planned on creating.

However the duo didn’t give up or get disheartened at the news. Instead they learned that you shouldn’t wait too long – and immediately worked on a second unique design idea which resulted in the compass. This was strongly in sync with their vision of Avøra, which was to discover and listen to your inner compass. 

Every Avøra watch is unique as each one has a number engraved on the back of it, and each model is limited to 100 pieces so we constantly develop new, beautiful designs.  

Catherin and Kaja work very well together where Kaja's BA and MA in Business Management helps her to focus on the overall operations and business. Catherin has a background in graphic design and an MA in Branding and Communications so she handles the creative side such as designing the website and other marketing assets. She also takes care of product photoshoots to make sure every product looks stunning.

Based in Germany the two designers are keen to reach a global audience without worrying about the margins that a physical store would demand. While searching for the perfect platform to launch their company, they came across Wix.com and formed otheir online presence. What finalised their choice was its beautiful templates that were both  professional and customisable. Having an online store allowed the designers to build a database of their customers and recognise that their main customers are young professionals between the ages of 25 and 35. 

Turning your hobby or your passion into a business is an easy task as long as you look at every challenge as an opportunity. It definitely helps to work in a duo to balance out the creative and business aspect of the company. If you want to take the plunge and turn your hobby into an online business, don’t think too much and just do it!

Kaja's top tips on making your dreams a reality:

• Create a website
  Your website is an immediate representation of you and your brand, so ensure that you choose a great platform for it.
  As we mentioned earlier, we decided to choose Wix as it was easy to manage and navigate. Wix’s platform enabled us to make our website mobile-friendly without a hassle and helped us create an e-newsletter for our subscribers to stay updated on the latest offers.
  When you create a website, make sure you enhance your site’s SEO to increase traffic that is arriving from search engine results
• Promote yourself
  Make sure that your name is included in every digital directory related to your field so that if someone is searching for a type of jewellery, they’ll be able to find you easily. 

• Stay in touch with your customers
  E-newsletters are an extremely effective tool for maintaining online engagement with your audience. Sending out emails with high-quality content on a regular basis keeps your followers involved and interested.
  There are several ways to build your database, including adding a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ function on your website. To encourage your visitors to opt in, offer them a valuable freebie in exchange for their email such as a discount coupon for purchasing a product from your website.
• Stay active on social media
  Social media is a great platform for new and small businesses to develop a following. Before you begin, pick out the best platforms for your brand to be active on.
  There’s no point in creating an account on all of them if you don’t have the time to update and post on them at least thrice a week. For example, we promote our brand mostly on Facebook and Instagram, which works well for us because everyone enjoys a beautiful watch.

www.avoratime.com