Hello! I'm Ekaterina - the entrepreneur behind Tulihelmi.
I founded Tulihelmi in 2010 and here I tell you about my journey as an entrepreneur.
I graduated as a biologist in St. Petersburg in 2004. I had time to work for a couple of years in a small biotechnology company before I moved to Finland to be with my husband in 2007.
After moving, I got crazy about polymer clay. In my opinion, it was the most wonderful material in the world, because with it it was possible to easily realize any kind of jewelry design.
The hobby has taken me so strongly that in the end I have decided to start my own company.
Am I an entrepreneur? The idea seemed crazy when I knew nothing about entrepreneurship, and especially in a foreign country without proper language skills. That's why I went to an accounting course, one part of it was entrepreneurship. The study was in Finnish, which I only had time to study a little, but luckily there were a lot of numbers in accounting 🙂
I founded Tulihelmi on April 1, 2010. I've been making polymer clay jewelry for a couple of years and I immediately got up to speed. My first customers were Russian speakers from all over Finland. Within a year, I have established an online store and started visiting craft fairs and sales. Year by year, the jewelry collection changed, until I started making only picture and text jewelry from polymer mass and resin.
From the beginning, the quality of jewelry accessories was important to me, as I myself sometimes had a reaction to cheap jewelry. So the surgical steel came into use almost immediately. In 2012, I also started selling skin-friendly jewelry. Today, I almost completely stopped making jewelry, I focus on the import and sale of hypoallergenic jewelry parts.
