Jewelry is a complicated business, and one that not many students get involved with. Despite this, people in the San Ramon area get to witness the start of a new local jewelry business from a Cal High student.

Junior Julianna Ho started selling its first items with its Genesis Collection of jewelry on Feb. 4. Her business, Julianna’s Jewelry, launched to great success, as she sold out extremely quickly after the collection was released.

Her newest line of products, the Serenity Collection, was released on Feb. 26 and contains four new rings.This new collection of rings was met with similar success as the first.

“Honestly, I was so surprised,” Ho said about the overwhelming support and success of her business.

Ho, who is a part of Cal High’s American Cancer Society Club that raises funds for cancer research, originally had the idea to start her business when planning ways to raise money for the club. Even after the success of her business, her main focus of Julianna’s Jewelry has been squarely on donating to cancer funds, with 75 percent of profits going to organizations like the American Cancer Society (ACS).

Despite having low expectations for her business and focusing mostly on helping ACS, Ho has already donated $907 of her $950 goal to ACS. The success of her new collection means that that number will be increasing.

When some of her first customers were asked about why they think her business was as successful as it was, they shared their theories.

“I feel like it’s coming from the school,” said sophomore Catherine Le, one of the ambassadors who was given free jewelry to help promote the business.

Lee thinks that a lot of the success that came to the business came from Ho’s own hard work and the community she built up.

In the past, Ho never had much interest in making jewelry, and before this year she didn’t wear much either. But when scrolling through some rings online, she had an idea and believed that she could make those rings too, so she did just that.

During the trial and error phase of creating rings though, Ho almost gave up several times. But her sister, Joanna, played a big role in motivating her into doing better and succeeding in the end.

The jewelry that Ho creates has a very distinctive style to it. Usually it has one or multiple pearls embedded in the ring. One thing that inspired the design of her creations were some pinterest posts, and the rest of the ideas came from her own mind.

Ho’s business has left an impact on the people around her, such as her sister who helped her out when she was still starting the business, as well as the customers who bought her handmade jewelry.

“I’m really proud of her for being so successful and still donating towards cancer,” junior Joanna Ho said.

Ho has lamented the fact that most successful small businesses lose interest in donating to good causes, after their initial success. Despite this sad trend, she still sticks with her goals and donates well over half of her profits to cancer research.

“I’m really proud of her for supporting this cause,” said junior Diya Madhok, one of Ho’s primary customers.

Madhok was first introduced to the business through Instagram, and since learning about its charity oriented goal, she supported it by purchasing Ho’s jewelry.

Madhok said her wish is that Julianna’s Jewelry will keep up and running for a long time, and she hopes it will continue its journey to donate money to save lives. Ho shares the same hope as well.

“I hope I can keep doing it, because I like doing it,” Ho said.