The customer is always right

Whose voices we choose to carry with us.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “The customer is always right.”

The funny thing is, that’s not actually the full quote.

It’s: “The customer is always right in matters of taste.”

Somewhere along the way, we seemed to lose the last four words. I think that might have been a mistake.

It all started with a necklace….

It’s funny how the smallest incidents can spark complete outrage and total bewilderment. If you run a small business - or have a best mate who does - this one’s for you.

It was another normal Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Honestly, I can’t remember because they all seem to merge into one.

There simply aren’t enough hours in the day, and this relentless heat had created some sort of mental malaise over my brain, making it even harder to think straight. I’d barely slept. In fact, I’d moved downstairs (onto an air mattress) into the basement with my bulldog, Boicey, because if I was struggling with the heat, imagine being permanently dressed in a fur coat with no shoes.

Anyway.

I received a notification on Instagram.

“So-and-so has tagged you in a post.”

Let’s call her C.

What followed was over three minutes of my business being publicly dismantled.

C had posted a lengthy video explaining how her four-year-old personalised necklace had snapped multiple times and that she felt it was her duty to warn her 340,000 followers about my small business. Naturally, she tagged @roxannefirst, just in case anyone was unsure who she was trying to take down. A nice touch.

She explained that although she constantly received compliments on her necklace, she deliberately avoided telling people where it was from because she “didn’t want us making any more money.”

Lovely. What a gal. Top drawer - wouldn’t you say?

Then came another few minutes explaining why the necklace was terrible, why our customer service was terrible and why nobody should ever buy from my business because people should “save their pennies” for jewellery that “doesn’t break.”

Her justification was that she likes to give her audience honest reviews of the things she buys.

Fair enough.

People are perfectly entitled to share their experiences. What they’re not entitled to do is leave out half the story. Even if it is more convenient and makes her story a little more ‘entertaining’.

What made me lol, though, was what came next.

The very next story was discussing with her followers whether she should cut her hair.

Really? Wow. Okay. Fascinating stuff.

One minute we’re publicly putting a small business on trial.

The next we’re crowdsourcing a haircut.

Who actually cares?

Don’t get me wrong, I follow some brilliant creators. People who inspire me with their style, introduce me to places I’d never have found, recommend books, exhibitions, restaurants and recipes. I’ve discovered artists, hotels and tiny independent brands through people whose taste I genuinely admire.

That’s influence.

But somewhere along the way, we’ve confused influence with broadcasting every passing thought to hundreds of thousands of people, as though every opinion deserves an audience. A bit like when people used to share what they had for breakfast in the early days of Facebook.

Crackers (not literally - more like a bowl of coca puffs).

Maybe that’s what I found so unsettling. Not the necklace.

The performance of certainty.

The idea that every minor inconvenience has become content, and every everyday decision - right down to a haircut - needs a public consultation.

Weird.

Anyway, back to the necklace...

Now, let me be clear.

I completely understand how frustrating it is when jewellery breaks. I really do.

When you’ve spent your hard-earned money on something, you want to wear it every day. You want it to become part of you. You certainly don’t expect it to fail. And when you’ve invested in something expensive, it’s only natural to expect it to be better made.

But better made doesn’t mean indestructible.

That’s true whether it’s a cashmere jumper, a fancy handbag or a piece of fine jewellery.

The laws of physics don’t become any less relevant simply because something costs more (annoying I know). I didn’t make the rules, Science did.

But fine jewellery is exactly that.

Fine.

It isn’t fashion jewellery, and it isn’t indestructible. Chains catch. Clasps wear. Gold bends. Chains are pulled unknowingly or accidentally. It’s OK - it’s not the end of the world. Life happens.

No fine jeweller - not us, not Tiffany & Co., not anyone - can promise that something delicate, worn day in and day out for four years, will never need repairing. Hence why most fine jewellers don’t include chains in their warranty. If pressure is applied to something, it bends, snaps, breaks. It’s pure physics huns.

None of that was what troubled me.

What troubled me was that I genuinely thought we’d failed her. After watching the videos, I didn’t immediately feel angry.

I felt sick.

I sat down and started reading. Every email. Every repair request. Every invoice. Every conversation we’d ever had with her. Eighteen pages compiled by my lovely customer services colleague (an angel sent from actual heaven).

I remember thinking, What have we missed? Where did we let her down?

Because despite what some people think, I don’t want unhappy customers.

Quite the opposite.

If someone has had a poor experience with Roxanne First, I want to know about it. Not because I enjoy criticism - who does? - but because if we’ve genuinely fallen short, I want to fix it. Or at least try to.

That’s the bit people rarely see.

When your name is above the door, criticism doesn’t land in a customer service inbox somewhere. It lands with you. That’s the privilege and the burden of building something yourself.

So I kept reading.

Turns out we’d done exactly what we’d promised. We’d repaired the necklace free of charge (despite it not being part of the warranty). Then repaired it again (again, still not in warranty). We’d responded politely every single time. We’d extended an influencer discount. Eventually, despite the necklace being over four years old, I even offered a full refund (she wasn’t entitled to one).

Plot twist.

She said no.

Oh and another cracker - she’d asked her audience about her consumer rights and how she should “fight this one.” The battle of Influencer vs chain. What a hero.

But can we just pause for a second?

Human to human.

Somebody tried to publicly damage a business I’d spent ten years building (and actively encourage them - several times over to not support a small business)... over a broken necklace. I’ll let that sit with you for a second.

Anyways.

Before that, I’d also reached out to her personally. Not to argue. Not to tell her she was wrong. Simply to lay out the actual facts: the timeline, the repairs we’d carried out (laboratory findings when jewellery is inspected under a loop etc), the emails we’d exchanged and even the rather unglamorous physics of fine jewellery itself.

I genuinely thought that once she had the full picture, we’d be able to have a sensible conversation.

Instead, it became obvious that facts weren’t really what she was looking for. Her version of events had already been decided. And at the same time (it seemed) she was trying to justify her own behaviour - to me - because all of a sudden she seemed to have a conscience (ish).

In her story, there was a big, bad jewellery brand out to sell people necklaces that “always break”, and she was the person bravely warning everyone else.

It’s a compelling narrative - kind of, maybe, if you have nothing better to do.

The only problem was that it wasn’t true.

If we’d spent the last ten years selling thousands of personalised pieces that constantly broke, I rather suspect we wouldn’t still be here.

That was the moment something shifted for me. There is something deeply peculiar about social media. One person can spend three minutes telling half a story.

The other person can spend three hours gathering emails, invoices, repair records, timelines and evidence to establish the facts.

Guess which version people remember.

I’ve thought about that a lot. Not just because of this incident, but because it says something about the world we now live in.

We’ve become remarkably comfortable accepting the first version of a story that flashes across our screens, particularly if it’s delivered with enough confidence. Context has become optional. Nuance doesn’t perform very well.

Certainty does. And outrage performs even better. As a founder, you’re also in an impossible position. If you respond publicly, you’re defensive. If you stay quiet, people assume you’re guilty. If you explain yourself, you’re making excuses. If you don’t, you’ve admitted fault. It’s a game you simply cannot win. And you didn’t even want to play in the first place. I’d rather be on a tennis court.

The irony is that, in trying not to inflame the situation, you end up surrendering the narrative entirely.

Perhaps that’s the part I found hardest.

Not the criticism. Criticism comes with the territory.

If we genuinely get something wrong, I want to know about it. I’d much rather hear an uncomfortable truth than lose a customer because we failed to listen.

But that’s very different from watching someone carefully edit a story until they’re the hero and you’re the villain.

The older I get, the more I realise that social media doesn’t reward people for changing their minds.

It rewards people for doubling down. Maybe that’s why so few disagreements ever end with understanding anymore.

They’re not really conversations. They’re performances.

‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and woman merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acting being seven ages’

- As You Like It. W. Shakespeare.

And once the performance begins, the audience has already decided who they’re clapping for.

Thankfully, moments like this are incredibly rare. Otherwise, I’d probably have checked myself into some kind of nervous breakdown facility. You never knows what tomorrow brings ; ).

In ten years of running Roxanne First, I can probably count on one hand the number of customers who have genuinely left me scratching my head.

The vast majority have been wonderful. Kind. Patient. Understanding. Even when something has gone wrong.

Because things do go wrong sometimes. Jewellery can fail. Parcels go missing. Mistakes happen. The difference is that most people want a solution. A tiny handful want something else entirely. Like, uh, maybe attention?

Thankfully, I don’t always navigate moments like this on my own.

James is Calm. Measured. Completely unflappable. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why we’re together. Life has a funny way of pairing anxious people with calm ones.

William, who works with me, is infinitely more balanced than I am. He’s the sort of pal who reads an inflammatory email, pauses, shrugs and moves on.

Same with my best mate, Sam. He’d offer some super calm, super smart advice as always, delivered in his American twang.

Meanwhile, I’m mentally drafting seventeen responses, replaying conversations in my head and wondering if my entire reputation is about to collapse because someone with a ring light has had a bad day.

I’ve learnt so much from watching the way all three of them deal with conflict.

None of them rushes to defend themselves. None of them assumes every criticism deserves a response. None of them mistakes someone else’s emotions for objective truth.

I’m still learning.

Because when you’ve built something from nothing, it’s very difficult not to take it personally.

Roxanne First isn’t just a business to me.

It’s ten years of early mornings. Late nights. Missed holidays. Sleepless launches. Boxes packed by hand. Problems solved at midnight. Conversations with customers. Relationships with suppliers. Designs that somehow ended up around people’s necks on their wedding day.

All behind the scenes - not for the world to watch, and applaud.

So when somebody attacks the brand, it doesn’t feel like they’re shouting at a logo.

It feels personal. Because it is.

There’s a misconception that once you own a business, you somehow become detached from it.

If anything, the opposite is true.

You become more emotionally invested than you ever imagined possible. Every glowing review makes your week. Every disappointed customer stays with you far longer than they probably realise. And perhaps that’s why founders sometimes struggle to explain themselves. Not because we think we’re always right. But because we care. Probably too much. But here’s the strange thing. After all the emails. The videos. The screenshots.

The hours spent replaying everything in my head...

I realised something.

C isn’t the person I think about when I think about my business. She never was. And never will be.

I think about the woman who bought one of our necklaces ten years ago and still wears it every day.

The couple who got engaged wearing our rings. The daughter who surprised her mum with a personalised bracelet after she’d finished chemotherapy. The customer who emails simply to say, “I still love it.” The people who quietly recommend us to friends. Who come back year after year. Who trust us with birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and milestones. They don’t tag us in angry videos. They don’t perform their disappointment for an audience. They simply wear our jewellery. Enjoy it. Live their lives.

And, in truth, they’re the reason I started this business in the first place.

Not to win arguments. Not to prove strangers wrong. But to create something people might treasure. Somewhere along the way, I nearly forgot that.

Thankfully, they reminded me.

I also want to say something to anyone reading this who runs a small business.

Whether you’re making candles in your kitchen, knee deep in Excel spreadsheets, packing boxes from your spare room, chasing suppliers, replying to customer emails between school runs, designing products, balancing cash flow, paying wages or simply trying to keep your head above water...

I see you. Hi.

Because I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to carry your business around in your head twenty-four hours a day. To be thinking about stock while you’re trying to have dinner. To answer emails on holiday. To wake up at three in the morning because you’ve suddenly remembered something you forgot to do. And I know what it’s like when that one customer makes you question all of it.

Just for a moment. They make you wonder whether it’s worth it.

Whether you’re good enough. Whether you’ve somehow failed.

You haven’t.

Every founder I know has a story like this.

You’re not alone. The good news is that those moments pass. The loyal customers stay. The kind emails stay. The people who quietly support you stay. Those are the people worth building for.

Because kindness doesn’t cost anything. Neither does picking up the phone. Neither does sending an email before pressing record. Most problems can be solved if both people actually want to solve them. This experience taught me far more than it ever took from me.

Not because I enjoyed it - I didn’t.

But because it reminded me that not everything deserves the same weight. Not every opinion deserves your attention. Not every criticism deserves your energy. Not every customer is your customer (thank goodness on this occassion).

And not every battle is worth fighting.

The older I get, the more I realise that running a business isn’t really about making jewellery.

It’s about judgement. Learning what matters. Learning what doesn’t. Knowing when to stand your ground. Knowing when to let something go.

Knowing the difference between people looking for a solution and people looking for an audience. Because, in the end, that’s the real lesson this necklace gave me.

Not everyone who crosses your path is meant to stay. Not every voice deserves the same space in your head.

The people worth holding onto are rarely the loudest.

They’re the ones who’ve quietly trusted us with birthdays, anniversaries, engagements and everyday moments over the last ten years.

They’re the reason I started Roxanne First, and why I am still here, despite a few snapped chains.

And they’re the reason I’ll keep going.

Until next time, keep fighting the big fight.

Rocky x