Sarasota jeweler goes viral with videos — including baby squirrel

____________Bottom lineKey takeaway: A Sarasota jeweler who has handmade more than 18,000 wedding rings and had videos go viral on social media has purchased his own store.Core challenge: Staying relevant on social media, which can be fast-moving (algorithms, AI) and fickle.What’s next: Longer-form social media videos and creating more custom-commissioned jewelry.____________Sarasota entrepreneur and jewelry-maker Todd Alan says some customers will come into his store, hand him a stone and thousands of dollars and say: "Do whatever you want."It's a mark of trust mixed with artistry Alan has built in his long career. It's also a level of success Alan, 63, likely didn't envision earlier in his career, when he was, among other things, a starving artist, dating a hippie and, for a time, living mostly off the grid.But thanks to consistent creativity, social media know-how, willingness to adapt quickly and, significantly, a baby squirrel who made a guest appearance in one of his videos in 2023, Alan has built Todd Alan Studios into what's nearly a $1 million business. He has also built a massive online following, with videos in total that have been watched more than 75 million times. After “many years of hard work,” says Alan, “I finally feel like that successful artist that I always wanted to be.”Starting outThe last time Alan worked for someone else he was 19, he says, stocking vending machines in Ohio. After that, he played in a band touring what he calls the “funk circuits” at hotels at night. Inspired by his hippie girlfriend, who wore 10 necklaces and rings on every finger, he began making jewelry during the day. Everywhere they went, she wanted to go into jewelry stores. “I started falling in love with gemstones and jewelry, and just started playing on my own,” Alan says. “So I made a few pieces.” First, it was for friends, and then he began selling it.“Slowly, the jewelry started making better money,” says Alan, who has been a full-time metalsmith creating jewelry since 1986.Todd Alan's braided wedding rings represent the weaving of lives together.Courtesy imageTodd Alan makes what he calls "swirl rings" that are more involved than wedding bands.Courtesy imageAlan grew up outside Cleveland, and in the 1990s operated a jewelry store outside the city in a town called Peninsula for about a decade.“I was known as the Barefoot Jeweler,” Alan says. He also sold his wares at jewelry shows and Renaissance fairs until 2005.“He was a total starving artist,” says Lyra Neff, his daughter, 36, the office executive for Todd Alan Studios. “When I was a baby, they would have to decide between diapers and food.”Being self-taught is “the reason I am so successful,” Alan says. “Because, frankly, I was so poor when I started — I took zero classes ... had no connections, and I literally taught myself everything from scratch.”Neff says her father’s first jewelry buffer was a shoe polisher from a thrift store, and he adds that someone lent him a torch to use. Over the years, Alan has become known for his handwoven, braided wedding rings.“I have jewelers all over the world dying to know how the heck I do what I do, and the only reason that I learned [my technique] is because I didn't learn the traditional ways,” Alan says. “I found my own ways of doing it and stuck with them.”When it comes to creating jewelry, Alan says he tries to visualize the beginning of a piece, and then it becomes clearer where to go from there.“You can get so frustrated as a jeweler, because you're in tiny spaces,” Alan says. But his path is “just follow and trust. That's what a lot of my work is.”Web savvyIn 1998, Alan started a website called handwovenbands.com. His wife at the time said he was crazy for thinking anyone would buy wedding rings online, he recalls.But in 2000, the site had its first sale — and it came at a critical moment: Alan had chosen to close his brick-and-mortar store and move to Southern Ohio “to live in the woods," he says, "far away from anything."____________Ring the bellSarasota jeweler Todd Alan says the wedding ring business is “stable” and pays the bills, which allows him to "make art pieces and take large commissions on those pieces,” such as more involved rings. He has also created wands, bracelets, crowns and other items. “I always want to break new ground,” Alan says. “My interest is always what's next. So I'm always playing and coming up with neat new things.”____________Within weeks, he had a second sale, and business began to pick up online. Google sent troves of customers his way, as Alan’s website appeared at the top of the page when people searched for braided wedding rings or unique wedding rings online.In recent years, however, competition stiffened.“How the heck does a little guy in a shop compete with Tiffany or something like that?” Alan says. To get web traffic, he began paying $60,000 annually for clicks about four years ago.“We were 100% dependent on these pay-per-clicks to keep us alive,” Alan adds. “It was panic.” If clicks were down, the business scrambled to figure out why and fix it.Says Alan: “You're constantly playing with those levers.”Sarasota storesAlan came to Florida in 2016 to set up shop on St. Armands Circle, above the Columbia Restaurant.Next, the business moved across from Crab & Fin to a storefront on one of the “spokes” of St. Armands Circle, Alan says, in an attempt to get more foot traffic. After not making any money there because everything went toward rent, he continues, the business moved to the Burns Court area of downtown Sarasota on Pineapple Avenue.Todd Alan Studios had been leasing downtown for a handful of years when the rent was set to double.“We were vulnerable,” Neff says.After an extensive search, the business found a space in Sarasota’s Rosemary District — and this time it acquired it instead of renting. The business, through Todd Alan Properties LLC, purchased Unit 106 at 1542 4th St. last June for $475,000, according to Sarasota County property records.“We managed to get the financing, and we took the leap, and now we own our own store,” Alan says. “Our mortgage is less than we were paying in rent.”The store hosted a grand opening in November.“There's a feeling about owning. It's stability. It's deeper,” says Alan.Todd Alan Gallery is at 1542 4th St., Unit 106, in Sarasota's Rosemary District.Photo by Lori SaxThe company has seven employees, including part-time and contract workers, and Alan's son-in-law Matt Thomas has become his apprentice, making wedding rings for a little over a year. The 1,000-square-foot shop includes a showroom, workshop and consultation space. “We love our walk-ins,” says Neff, who multiple times had to step out during a recent interview at the shop due to the phone and doorbell ringing. “We do a lot of consultation.”A customer flew in from Michigan that morning to meet with Alan. Other clients have come from different countries.“We’re really starting to get known,” Alan says. ”We’re known all over the world. We’ve sold over 18,000 wedding rings.”Adds Alan: “It’s been social media that’s the game-changer.”Social mediaAlan started creating videos with Neff when their store was closed during the pandemic. “We actually did well during the pandemic,” he says, because his online presence was established.A few years ago, a woman from Siesta Media LLC, a social media marketing agency, came into the store and, in an in-person cold-call, asked if they needed help with their social media. Since then, her company has been posting for the business regularly.Todd Alan Studios has created more than 400 videos through January, he says. “We’ve got more than a million followers across platforms,” Alan says. “We have one real blessing that kind of helped kick things off in the form of a squirrel.”In late 2023, Alan had been caring for a baby squirrel that was abandoned near their store, and it became attached to him, he says. While they were making a video one day, his daughter pulled out a wand that he had created for her as a child and surprised him.“As I'm talking about it, this squirrel runs up around my shoulder, and it doesn't even faze me,” Alan says. “It's a story in a story with a surprise outcome” and was “an overnight game changer — suddenly we had all these followers, you know? One hundred thousand people are looking at you.”The squirrel video has generated more than 19 million views on Instagram. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Todd Alan - Handmade Braided Wedding Rings (@todd_alan_gallery)Another video “blew us up on Tiktok,” Neff says. That was a September clip in which she asked her father questions submitted by customers, including this one: “Are diamonds rare?” The answer, Alan says, is that they are not, adding: “There are much rarer stones." The video has more than 47 million views on TikTok.One factor in their social media success, the father-daughter duo says, is the spontaneity they bring to their videos. They do not plan out what they are going to say exactly and are mostly "off the cuff."Lyra Neff and her father, Todd Alan, estimate they have created more than 400 videos for their business's social media accounts.Photo by Lori SaxThey have created a series of weekly videos called “Gemstone Tuesdays” in which Alan shares information about a certain gemstone. “He'll do some research beforehand. We might pick a gemstone, but it's usually just me surprising him” with questions and interjections, Neff says.“People want authenticity,” Alan adds. “What has changed more than anything is that people have gotten to know us through these videos, and they trust us,” Alan says. “And trust is everything in most businesses, especially jewelry... People literally come hand me a stone and just go, ‘I trust you do something fabulous.’'"____________Striking social media goldJeweler Todd Alan has amassed more than 1 million followers on social media.An abandoned baby squirrel Alan had been caring for in 2023 scurried across the jeweler while he and his daughter, Lyra Neff, were filming a clip about a wand he made for her when she was a child. That video has gotten more than 19 million views on Instagram and even prompted The Dodo, a site featuring animal stories, to produce another video about Alan and the orphaned squirrel.Some of Todd Alan's greatest social media hits include:“Are diamonds rare?” video: 47 million views on TikTokSquirrel video: 19 million views on InstagramWand or scepter video: 5 million views on TikTokDifference between jeweler and blacksmith: 4.5 million views on YouTubeGemstone Tuesday launch: 1 million views on Instagram____________