By Alyssa Dearborn
When Adrienne Peltz’s husband, Aric, wanted to propose to her, he wanted to give her a special ring. The special ring he had in mind had to be handcrafted by a local jeweler since he did not know how to forge custom jewelry yet. After Aric learned how to forge and design custom jewelry, the couple turned their love story into a business. Today, the couple operates Forge Gone Conclusions to create special fine jewelry from ethically sourced materials ranging from gemstones and sterling silver to porcupine quills.
“It’s a husband-wife team.” Peltz said, “He does the design and manufacturing of the jewelry and I do everything else. So I do the operations management, marketing, legal and finance. And we have a YouTube channel, so I do all the recordings and make all the videos. And I do a lot of customer contact.”
Her previous career in project management prepared her for all of the roles that she would take on while running Forge Gone Conclusions.
“I was a project manager for 12 years and it was that experience that helped me start a business and also be able to manage it on a daily basis.” she said when asked about her role at her company. “So, I use a lot of the skills that I learned – workflows, just general management skills – and I apply it to the business. It’s more of the operations management of the business. Whether it’s reaching out to customers before or after we make the piece, or it’s building and crafting a website, or making posts out to social media, or doing the bookkeeping, that’s pretty much a lot of the things I do.”
All of the organizational and managerial work is essential to bringing custom products to customers. With great managerial skills, she’s able to help enhance the personal experience of her clients by getting to know the customer and even providing custom video footage of the forging process. Seeing those customers happy with a unique product is, according to Peltz, one of the most rewarding parts of what she does.
“I think it’s the happiness that we deliver to our customers.” she explained. “It’s really rewarding to take their dreams and bring them to life. Because maybe they had a concept that they had in mind and they really wanted to make it, but they just didn’t know how to. So, coming to us, we’re able to make that a reality.”
“And then there’s the opposite. We do work with people who have existing jewelry and we transform it into something different. So maybe it’s a pair of earrings or a necklace that their grandmother had but they would never wear because of the style. We will take it and transform it into something they would wear. Just the feeling and expression on their faces when it’s done and how happy they are to receive it, I think that’s very rewarding.”
Although every piece created by Forge Gone Conclusions is unique and memorable in its own way, Peltz recalls a special piece that allowed her and Aric to be a part of a couple’s special moment.
“I think the most memorable to me was an engagement ring.” she recalled when asked about the company’s most interesting piece, “And I think it was cool because of a couple of things. It really reflected the personality of the person who’s going to get it. She has a May birthday and she likes the color green. We put emeralds onto her engagement ring so that it kind of reflects the birthday and her favorite color. But the cooler part to this is that they did the proposal at the Mets game in Syracuse. So, to be able to go to the game and watch the proposal with one of our rings was really exciting.”
As a member of the WBOC, Peltz has been able to connect with other women in business and gain resources to help her business succeed.
“It’s been phenomenal.” Peltz said about being a WBOC member, “I’ve met a lot of other women in the community that I never would have met otherwise. I kind of wished that I had met the group or found out about the group earlier in my career because I would have definitely joined it.”
“I like the resources in terms of the collective wisdom of the group. It’s also cool supporting other women. It’s like, this is a collection of women that you might want to turn to first and say, ‘hey, could you help me?’ or ‘could I use some of your services?’ or ‘could we trade or something?’ Because it’s a nice group of just women supporting each other.”
If you are interested in custom jewelry from Forge Gone Conclusions, visit Adrienne and Aric’s website at https://fgconclusions.com/.
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