Mignon Faget, Ltd. is a booming brick-and-mortar store, located in Southern Louisiana, with 5 retail locations. However, it is Mignon Faget’s online store that is the most successful portion of their retail business. Here is Mignon Faget’s story:
Mignon Faget was driven to design jewelry derived from natural and architectural forms found in her native New Orleans environment.
“I was born here and I’ve lived here all of my life,” Faget said. “What is so beautiful about Louisiana comes out through my work. It is a mysterious place.”
Mignon Faget began her design career in 1969 with the launch of her first ready-to-wear clothing collection. The success of the collection prompted her to explore what might be the perfect belt, pin or necklace to enhance these ensembles. This early exercise and her studies in sculpture from Sophie Newcomb College led to her first jewelry forms. Since then, jewelry has become her all-consuming interest in the field of design.
From the beginning, she has worked closely with natural forms, never simply duplicating but always extracting the substance, the essence of a particular shape…refining it to perfection.
Mignon Faget said, “My work is like a journal. Whatever it is that I am particularly interested in at that phase of my life comes out in my work.”
A fifth generation New Orleanian, Faget has flourished in the culture and traditions of her birthplace. Her collections reflect this. Her first jewelry collection, SEA, is the transformation of the natural jewels found on the Gulf Coast into wearable objects of adornment. Botanical designs include HIVE and indigenous plants such as Banana Leaves, Cycas, Palmae and BAMBOO. ROMANESQUE RETURN reflects the architectural details of the historic Henry Hobson Richardson Library located on the famed Lee Circle. IRONWORKS is a study based on the historic Vieux Carre work of Marcellino Hernandez, the most renowned of the Spanish iron forgers in Louisiana. LOUISIANA features touches of whimsy with the Gumbo Necklace and Mardi Gras Charm Bracelet.
The Launch of MignonFaget.com
Mignon Faget, Ltd. launched its first website in 1998. Originally, the site was merely a landing page with contact information and a few product images. The first site was designed as a place to peruse Mignon Faget’s designs and encouraged collectors to call the 800 number to place orders. As business grew, Mignon Faget launched their ecommerce website using the Miva Merchant platform. In order to get the most functionality out of the software, Mignon Faget, redesigned their website using the Professional Services team.
As a result of setting up their Internet business, Mignon Faget learned that re-designing a website is not a simple task. In fact, it can be very time consuming and labor intensive. This is why Mignon Faget and the Miva Merchant Professional Services team took great care to ensure that it would be relevant and useful for many years to come.
“We love the professional services staff,” said Mignon Faget. “They are always willing to research and go above and beyond on projects that we ask them about. They exhaust all option to ensure that we get what we need in the best way possible.”
Customization and Store Features
Mignon Faget, Ltd. customized their website in order to make it exactly how they envisioned it. MignonFaget.com is now integrated with their POS systems for order fulfillment and inventory. Mignon Faget, Ltd. also has custom printing of their UPS return labels, as well as automatic scheduling of product imports.
“Miva Merchant was very flexible to help us get to where we wanted to go,” said Faget. “Keeping your e-commerce site looking fresh and current is the key to success. We love that we were able to customize our site so that updating homepages and product information is super simple.”
“Our favorite feature that we’ve built into our online store is the swatches for product pages,” Mignon Faget said. “We love that you can go to a product and pick a metal by swatch, and view alternate images for that specific product.”
“For me, designing a collection of jewelry is highly personal. It begins with an idea and evolves into objects of adornment,” said Mignon Faget.
Today, MignonFaget.com is thriving and just had a record-breaking holiday season.
