"I Can't Believe It's Not Gold!"
We proudly introduce our latest campaign and slogan, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Gold!” It’s an ode to the notoriously whimsical ad of the 90s, but also a promise to better jewelry days ahead where everyone has the choice to own pieces that are eco friendly and ethical yet look just like the real thing. From the beginning, we’ve researched and invested in the technology and processes that can make our pieces look as refined as fine jewelry — not an easy feat when we’re replicating the color of 14k gold using a super strong, titanium-derived ceramic found naturally only on the surface of asteroids. (Not an exaggeration.)
To begin to illustrate the significance of the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Gold!” campaign, it’s important to stress the #1 fact about Ready-Made: we use 0% gold. The main reason is more or less obvious. Not using fine gold means a jewelry making process that is more eco friendly and ethical. Fine gold, after all, needs to be mined. And mines are a forever thing: even decommissioned mines (closed down) can leak chemicals, and often since the mine is no longer making money, no one does anything about the leak. So then, we’re often asked, “Why not recycled gold?”
We go into some *fine* details about recycled gold in our post Ethical and Eco Gold, What Do They Mean? Once upon a time before Ready-Made, we had worked with traditional gold plating methods and considered using recycled gold. But, in our research, we learned that anything before a refinery (where gold is melted down and resold as bars to jewelers, which is how all gold is sold in the US if you're not going straight to a mine) is pretty much unknown. How many brands do you come across that say they use responsibly sourced gold? What are the definitions and the standards? If being responsible meant going to a refinery today and purchasing a shiny bar of recycled gold that yesterday consisted of a pile of dirty gold, we wanted out. So we decided to not work with gold at all.
The jewelry industry is an industry as old as time, with nefarious players who wish to keep it that way. It’s skewed, biased, and extremely non-transparent even as marketers and copywriters have coined terminology and phrases that imply transparency but really lean towards greenwashing. The industry is also one that relies heavily on value and its perception. Thus, we wanted to move entirely outside of the traditional jewelry world and instead study high-tech, mission critical processes from the aerospace and medical manufacturing industries to see what we could apply to jewelry. We’ve always wondered how in this day and age with all the material advances that have taken place, why jewelry (especially fashion jewelry that is made not for value or sentimentality) is still being manufactured the same way it has been for decades: using harsh chemicals like cyanide, polluting water, releasing fumes. We wanted to be and will continue to be a new fashion jewelry alternative with all the look and feel of fine jewelry but with zero the avoidable negative impact.
It’s a fact that an asteroid is what killed the dinosaurs. As always, we come in peace. We’re not here to debate, but we like to think that we’re a jewelry alternative (made from asteroid material) that has arrived on Earth to start fresh and anew. #ICan’tBelieveItsNotGold!
To commemorate the launch of the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Gold! campaign, we’ve also designed a new sticker sheet to be included in every order. In this new design, we have a smattering of playful symbols. A dinosaur representing the old times. A rose to pay homage to vintage graphics but also butter roses. Plays on two famous paintings. The first is The Birth Of Venus, where our version of Venus arrives on Earth bearing a sphere of non-gold/Ready-Made gold. The second is The Scream. In our version, the shocked being is open-mouthed in disbelief. Behind it, a river spiked with Ready-Made gold. All the other elements (the toast, the butter knife, the gold lava lamp) are self explanatory, or at least we hope so.
And finally, all our stickers from past seasons are available again! Introducing the launch of our STICKER SHOP. Shop now and learn more about the inspiration behind each design.
