Custom Made Australian Jewellery - Fraser Ross - Chain Me Up

Who is Fraser Ross?

Fraser Ross (as we are now known) began trading online jewellery in July 2010 under the business name Chain Me Up. Today, some 7 years later Chain Me Up is both our registered trademark and the domain where we host our online store – Fraser Ross Jewellery

Ross was working for a gold and silver chain manufacturer on Queensland’s Gold Coast in the early 2000’s and had many requests from friends to supply them with quality solid gold chains at a price they couldn’t get in a retail jewellery store. With a long history in IT, it became apparent that the skills learned would be very useful in creating an online business and the contacts at the manufacturer guided him towards creating a jewellery store.

The manufacturer was able to custom make any of their gold and silver chains to any length for Ross and this gave him the key difference to the major retailers, who generally only sell what they keep in stock. Being able to provide customers with exactly the length of chain that they really wanted and in a reasonable time frame helped launch the business to a successful beginning.

Although custom made chains are the foundation upon which the business was built, it soon became clear that now the store had launched it was going to require a much wider range of products. We sought out a manufacturer for producing silver and gold charms to order and quickly formed a relationship with a small Australian business and that relationship is still going strong some 7 years later.

One of the main objectives of running this business was to only sell Australian made jewellery and in the early years we were able to meet this desire. Since we launched our own business, a number of manufacturers in Australia have closed down or sold out to overseas interests. This has made it much harder to keep our range of products exclusively Australian made, in fact there are some pieces that are simply not manufactured here and we do now source some jewellery from overseas manufacturers. Despite not being able to sell exclusively Australian jewellery, we have managed to keep our overseas goods to just 5% of our complete range.

As with our chains, our full range comprising more than 4600 charms can all be made in silver, yellow gold or rose gold and over 4000 of these charms are also available in white gold. A choice of findings (fittings) allows our charms to be for connected to existing traditional bracelets, to wear as earrings or pendants and fit to Pandora style snake chain bracelets using sliders. Selecting a parrot clasp even lets you easily swap charms from one bracelet to another in no time.

The past 7 years have seen many changes as shopping cart software has become much more complex and functional. Where functionality was missing, Ross has re-coded sections of the cart software to achieve results that otherwise would not have been possible. The difficulty of bulk updating prices, images and product descriptions was solved by Ross developing SQL statements to fully automate the processes that would otherwise take many hours of work.

Back when we first started people only viewed web sites on their computers, often over a dial up modem connection. High speed broadband and mobile telephones and tablets meant a complete redesign of our website to cater for this new technology. Our store is now based on a system called bootstrap that allows for beautiful design and outstanding functionality. Being responsive, it changes the layout of our thousands of web pages to best suit the many different screen layouts. Who knows what further developments will need to be considered in the next 7 years?

As well as being in charge of the technical side of our business, Ross has also started creating the first designs in our handmade range of jewellery. Currently a small range of sterling silver earrings and bracelets, but destined to grow into the future. Quality not quantity was the primary concern, so every link in every design is argon pulse welded to ensure the jewellery will be around for many years and won’t fall apart if you catch it on your clothing.