Nine years, and so many more experiences on the horizon.

It’s been nine years since I decided to launch Dune Jewelry as a formal business and when I take a moment to reflect, there are countless emotions that wash over me. I feel exceptionally proud and thankful to have built a team around me that is talented, ambitious, creative, quirky, passionate and loyal. Without them, the journey wouldn’t be half as fun!

Even after nine years, I continue to draw inspiration from our customers every single day. There are so many people who have followed our journey, rooting for us and cheering us on, and as an entrepreneur that’s powerful. Our customers have watched us grow and evolve from the original beach sand jewelry company to the one-and-only experiential jewelry brand in the world. From crushed Rocky Mountain granite, to ashes, to wedding flowers, to soil from the Appalachian trail, we capture experiences in every custom design that leaves our studio and that’s what motivates me every day. I love knowing that we’re creating something tangible that our customers can hold onto forever.

Some of the most unexpected chapters of these nine years have come from partnerships I never would have pictured back at the beginning. We’ve worked with grass from championship-winning ballfields, dirt from rodeo arenas, and sand from the warning track of a major league outfield — that last one came out of a sponsor collaboration with an online sports betting brand that wanted to send a small group of die-hard fans home with something a little more lasting than the usual giveaway after a big postseason weekend. What I remember from that project isn’t the logistics of getting the sand shipped to our studio. It’s watching the fans who received those pieces. They weren’t holding them because of the brand on the back of the card. They were holding them because that game, that night, that drive home with someone they loved was a memory they were afraid of losing — the same emotional weight as a wedding, or a first hike up a mountain, or a handful of ashes from a coastline that meant everything. Nine years in, that’s the through-line that keeps surprising me: it almost never matters where the material comes from. It matters that someone, somewhere, doesn’t want to forget.

I can’t say that starting and running a business is easy. In fact, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done and probably will ever do. Every day is filled with learning curves, small wins, some losses, frustration, exuberance, exhaustion, bursts of energy when I get my “second wind”, laughter and fear. No, I can’t say that it’s easy, but I can say that it continues to be my life’s greatest adventure and I’m looking forward to the next nine!

Thank you for continuously supporting this journey we’re on. I adore you all, and my appreciation is endless.

With Love & Sandy Hands,

Holly Daniels Christensen