Today I celebrate The MeriTomasa's Tresures Factory first birthday: just a year ago I signed up for freelancers, on November 2, 2016. A year of dozens of wedding bands and personalized jewelry. A year of new collections and markets, fairs and markets.

A year with difficult moments and moments that are not paid for with money. A year learning from everything: taxation, digital marketing, Prestashop, social networks... To make budgets and work with excel, to take advantage of everything that is included in a fair on a weekend, to turn Facebook and Instagram into my business card, to learn all the tricks to Google so that you can find me when you are looking for a customized jewel, to fight with the quarterly VAT declarations and how to calculate a conversion funnel. Learning that in order for my micro-business to move forward, I must be a jeweler, but I am also a manager and a salesperson. Learning that the most important thing is to respond to the expectations that have been placed in me by those many clients that are just behind each piece that has come out this year from MeriTomasa's Treasure Factory. Learning that MeriTomasa is you.

So it's time to say thank you:

• Those who follow me on this blog, on Facebook or on Instagram. On Twitter and LinkedIn.
• To the friends I have met from fairs, in front of my stand and behind the other stands.
• To Cedem and the Youth Business mentoring program, thanks to which I have worked with Antònia Farreras as a personal coacher. And to the COAMB Consolida’t program, thanks to which I count on the advice of Marc Fernandez of Innio Assessors. The best thing about any business plan is that it is never fulfilled, but it is the best compass to hold on to when the sea is coming down.
• To my particular business angel, my mother. To my sister Eva & co for human resources. And to my brother Isidro, my Digital Marketing Manager, who am I going to name employee of the year (paid but not paid :-) for those many hours in front of the computer. Eva and Isidro gave me the domain www.meritomasa.com when I turned 18: they did not imagine the work that this gift would bring them :)
• Those who make it difficult for me and those who make me doubt. If everything came as a gift, this would be boring.
• And especially to those who have trusted MeriTomasa to turn that I that is only in each of you into a jewel.

Hello! I am Meritxell Tomasa, jeweler and artisan goldsmith. In my treasures factory in Manresa (Barcelona) I combine technique and design to create bespoke jewelry for all tastes and pockets. Custom jewelry where you decide the meaning, design, materials or finishes to fill each treasure with something much more valuable than the splendor of metal: you!

I wrote it a year ago. It had been six months since I had said goodbye to my last job as a jeweler in someone else's workshop and a fixed salary every month end. Six months preparing all the procedures and the business plan, throwing myself headlong into all the introductory courses to the company I found (I even went to a startup contest!), Sharpening the machines of that first workshop I started to create with the 18 recently completed and setting up this website with Isidro (which is the third one we do: in this link you can see the first version and here the second one). Six months that had many other years of training and resume behind as a jeweler.

In the image above are the fruits. The thousand and one jewels of this first year. They are not all. They are just a sample of what best sums up this first anniversary: ​​those many little pieces of you that have come out of The MeriTomasa's Treasure Factory.

The best thing about a challenge overcome is that it is only the prelude to the challenge that follows. First year completed... Go for the second!