THE BINKABU ARCHIVES
The BINKABU Advent Calendar
The introduction of the Advent Calendar event was one of our most significant developments as a brand. The idea behind the event was to achieve two things - play with colour and texture outside of our usual trend towards recognition, and to introduce new bird species into the flock for a limited time.
Maddi developed the concept of a 24-day shopping event where ONE limited edition earring design was released each day. The collection itself was the Advent Calendar - each day on the website, a unique gift would be revealed - a limited edition product, ready to shop.
In our permanent flock, we honour the colours, character and true likeness of the birds that we design (within our signature style of course), and so we don't often get to play with abstract ideas or think outside the box. The Advent Calendar, now a yearly event for BINKABU, allows us to reach outside the bounds of our own rules, and have fun beyond measure.
Read Maddi's thoughts on the invention of the Advent Calendar below ↓
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Founder's Thoughts - The BINKABU Advent Calendar - Maddi Goodwin
Written by Maddi Goodwin
You know what's crazy? The BINKABU Advent Calendar has only been happening since 2021, but it feels like it's been around forever. It's such a staple event now in our year, and it's SO exciting every time.
As a designer of bird earrings in a world where there are... so many birds, and so many bird lovers and crazy bird people, I get countless requests for custom designs and new species. This is very overwhelming, not only because it's a lot of requests, but because I am a chronic people pleaser and over-achiever, and I want to do it all. I also really empathise with those who want to see us create bird species that are close to their heart!
Towards the end of 2021, I was struggling to accept the fact that there was no possible way for my small little business to satisfy all these requests. I was also yearning to try something outside of the ordinary with my designs, and felt the need for more COLOUR. I was restricted by my self-enforced design boundaries, the very guidelines for my signature style; cute, recognisable, wearable. The fact that the recognition of each species was paramount in my designs meant that I'd never really done anything quirky or outside the box. This made me question whether I could potentially do a small batch, limited run of some wacky products that wouldn't need to return to the flock.
Fast-forward, and I was doing a bit of grocery shopping during the tail end of the year. I stumbled across an Advent Calendar, just a simple, branded chocolate one with really gross chocolate, not much bigger than an A4 piece of paper. You know the ones. All of a sudden, from the depths of my constantly-wired-and-constantly-plotting ADHD brain, an idea formed.
An Advent Calendar. An earring Advent Calendar. To house the millions of ideas for colourful birds I'd already had...
But hang on - that's 24 pairs of earrings. Would anyone buy 24 pairs of earrings at once? And imagine the price! There was no way I could create something like this and keep it 1. affordable enough for my customers, and 2. profitable. My crippling perfectionism and the need to do things differently (it's a huge burden and one of my worst traits, to be honest) also meant that I wanted to reinvent the advent calendar as we know it, thus doing a standard version just wasn't good enough.
So boo-hoo, it wasn't going to work. I wasn't in the business of making small, generic studs that might be feasible for an actual 24-product... product. I designed detailed, intricate birds, pieces of wearable art. So a massive, singular Advent Calendar product was off the table.
But the powers of hyper-fixation cannot be stopped.
My brain housed an idea that was desperately trying to find itself, an idea centred around the Advent Calendar concept and a collection of joyful, colourful earrings. What about a collection? NO. I could never, ever release a collection of 24 birds. That's crazy. Way too much work.
But if I could do just ONE bird at a time? Every day, for 24 days? I don't know how or when or what spurred the thought, but like most of my brilliant ideas, it was just there one day - an online calendar.
I was going to become one with the Advent Calendar *gasp* My goodness, I WAS the Advent Calendar. Every day, for 24 days, I would open a cute little window into my brain to reveal a secret gift - a new design, a shoppable product.
Thus, just like that, a rough plan was in place - we were going to host a 24-day shopping event where ONE design was released per day, similar to opening a little Advent treat each day (sans the disgusting chocolate). As this was the first time we'd taken on such a huge workload in terms of design and making, numbers were going to be extremely limited for each design, only 10-20 pairs of each.
Tim, Bronte and I designed the colossal collection together, delighting in the creative freedom and the pretty colours and the glitter and the FUN. I planned how it would all work on the website, made a plan for the shipping of the products (the most complicated part of the Advent Calendar, in fact), and it was go time!
The result? We created a shopping FRENZY that had designs selling out within seconds and even over-selling as customers checked out at the exact same second. It was thrilling, it was nerve-racking, it was... a huge success!
After just a few days, we knew - the Advent Calendar was here to stay.
2023 Advent Calendar
an opportunity to explore
In 2023 we took the opportunity to explore products outside of jewellery, due to the birth of Maddi and Tim's son, Nova, in October of the same year. We had less time for design and manufacturing for this year's Advent Calendar, as both founders' priorities were naturally elsewhere during this period. This lead to the decision to introduce some cute and colourful homewares into our flock, sprinkled between some stunningly statement Advent jewellery designs. This Advent Calendar also saw some popular designs return due to time restraint, particularly after the success of our Christmas Collection left us working very hard to get everything made!
Our homewares turned out to be popular little stocking stuffers and gifts, and we are currently still stocking them in store.
BEST-SELLER: Superb Lyrebird
2022 Advent Calendar
This Advent Calendar was themed around the '12 Days of Christmas', and it was a whole lot of fun to come up with our own avian representations of each gift. A lot of the lines in the tune are actually birds, so it was relatively easy for some designs (Partridge in a Pear Tree, Turtledoves, Geese A-Laying etc). It got very interesting when we began to interpret the later lines, with designs that ranged from literal to ridiculous. Pipers Piping became an adorable sand piper with panpipes, Lords A-Leaping featured the male Japanese crane performing his signature mating dance, and a huddling family of owls represented Five Golden Rings with their golden irises. Our Ladies Dancing were a pair of elegant flamingos, but of course they had to be dressed up in tutus and ballet shoes. French Hens naturally featured a croissant and beret, and Drummers Drumming just had to be the palm cockatoo, the only bird known to drum with sticks.
Of course, that only got us to day 12, so the rest of the Advent Calendar featured some real show-stoppers. Highlights from the collection include our 'Christopher Robin' dangles, Ravin' Raven hoops, and the Storm Bird, a moody twist on our Elemental Air Bird studs.
2021 Advent Calendar
the beginning of something incredible
The introduction of the Advent Calendar event was one of our most significant developments as a brand. The idea behind the event was to achieve two things - play with colour and texture outside of our usual trend towards realism, and to introduce new bird species into the flock for a limited time. Maddi, a chronic people pleaser, was struggling to accept that there was no possible way for such small little business to satisfy all the many requests for various species, and so she used the concept of '24 days of gifts' to develop a 24-day shopping event where ONE design was released per day, similar to opening just one Advent window per day. As this was the first time we'd taken on such a huge workload in terms of design and making, numbers were extremely limited for each design (only 10-20 pairs of each). The result was a shopping FRENZY that had designs selling out within seconds and even over-selling as customers checked out at the exact same second.
After just a few days, we knew - the Advent Calendar was here to stay. In our permanent flock, we honour the colours, character and true likeness of the birds that we design (within our signature style of course), and so we don't often get to play with abstract ideas or think outside the box. The Advent Calendar, now a yearly event for BINKABU, allows us to reach outside the bounds of our own rules, and have fun beyond measure.
BEST-SELLER: Rainbow Phoenix
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Founder's Thoughts - The Advent Calendar - Maddi Goodwin
Written by Maddi Goodwin
You know what's crazy? The BINKABU Advent Calendar has only been happening since 2021, but it feels like it's been around forever. It's such a staple event now in our year, and it's SO exciting every time.
As a designer of bird earrings in a world where there are... so many birds, and so many bird lovers and crazy bird people, I get countless requests for custom designs and new species. This is very overwhelming, not only because it's a lot of requests, but because I am a chronic people pleaser and over-achiever, and I want to do it all. I also really empathise with those who want to see us create bird species that are close to their heart!
Towards the end of 2021, I was struggling to accept the fact that there was no possible way for my small little business to satisfy all these requests. I was also yearning to try something outside of the ordinary with my designs, and felt the need for more COLOUR. I was restricted by my self-enforced design boundaries, the very guidelines for my signature style; cute, recognisable, wearable. The fact that the recognition of each species was paramount in my designs meant that I'd never really done anything quirky or outside the box. This made me question whether I could potentially do a small batch, limited run of some wacky products that wouldn't need to return to the flock.
Fast-forward, and I was doing a bit of grocery shopping during the tail end of the year. I stumbled across an Advent Calendar, just a simple, branded chocolate one with really gross chocolate, not much bigger than an A4 piece of paper. You know the ones. All of a sudden, from the depths of my constantly-wired-and-constantly-plotting ADHD brain, an idea formed.
An Advent Calendar. An earring Advent Calendar. To house the millions of ideas for colourful birds I'd already had...
But hang on - that's 24 pairs of earrings. Would anyone buy 24 pairs of earrings at once? And imagine the price! There was no way I could create something like this and keep it 1. affordable enough for my customers, and 2. profitable. My crippling perfectionism and the need to do things differently (it's a huge burden and one of my worst traits, to be honest) also meant that I wanted to reinvent the advent calendar as we know it, thus doing a standard version just wasn't good enough.
So boo-hoo, it wasn't going to work. I wasn't in the business of making small, generic studs that might be feasible for an actual 24-product... product. I designed detailed, intricate birds, pieces of wearable art. So a massive, singular Advent Calendar product was off the table.
But the powers of hyper-fixation cannot be stopped.
My brain housed an idea that was desperately trying to find itself, an idea centred around the Advent Calendar concept and a collection of joyful, colourful earrings. What about a collection? NO. I could never, ever release a collection of 24 birds. That's crazy. Way too much work.
But if I could do just ONE bird at a time? Every day, for 24 days? I don't know how or when or what spurred the thought, but like most of my brilliant ideas, it was just there one day - an online calendar.
I was going to become one with the Advent Calendar *gasp* My goodness, I WAS the Advent Calendar. Every day, for 24 days, I would open a cute little window into my brain to reveal a secret gift - a new design, a shoppable product.
Thus, just like that, a rough plan was in place - we were going to host a 24-day shopping event where ONE design was released per day, similar to opening a little Advent treat each day (sans the disgusting chocolate). As this was the first time we'd taken on such a huge workload in terms of design and making, numbers were going to be extremely limited for each design, only 10-20 pairs of each.
Tim, Bronte and I designed the colossal collection together, delighting in the creative freedom and the pretty colours and the glitter and the FUN. I planned how it would all work on the website, made a plan for the shipping of the products (the most complicated part of the Advent Calendar, in fact), and it was go time!
The result? We created a shopping FRENZY that had designs selling out within seconds and even over-selling as customers checked out at the exact same second. It was thrilling, it was nerve-racking, it was... a huge success!
After just a few days, we knew - the Advent Calendar was here to stay.
