fitjewels

The brand fitjewels®

My name is Anne Labs and I am the founder and lead designer for fitjewels.com. In 2012, my husband and I relocated from Hamburg Germany to San Francisco, CA. At the time, I was 7 1/2 months pregnant and if you know anything about San Francisco, walking means lots of hills. Soon after moving, my daughter was born and I began the quest to find a gym in my neighborhood that offered childcare. Gyms throughout Germany offer childcare services, making it easier for new mothers to get back in shape after giving birth, though this was not the case in San Francisco.

After a few restless nights, my husband suggested that we get a stroller designed for lots of trekking, instead of high daycare expenses and exorbitant gym fees. I love to explore and hiking around the hills of San Francisco with my newborn seemed charming enough, and I would get lots of exercise. I bought a new pair of running shoes, and got on the Internet, researching strollers. Within days of having a new stroller, my husband arrives home from work and surprises me with a Fitbit Flex. He thought this seemed like the perfect way for me to track and stay motivated on my progress.

Though, Fitbit offers great products and I love tracking my daily activity levels, it seemed like a fashion faux pas to wear a rubber bracelet with a Givenchy cocktail dress whenever we would go to a nice dinner. There was no real way to dress up my Fitbit with high quality jewelry, I was trapped wearing a rubber bracelet, or some other, more inferior product that looked cheap and poorly made. At this point, it only made sense to leave my tracker out of my night time attire, which meant losing a segment of my daily calculations. While, I appreciated the many benefits my Fitbit Flex has to offer, the athletic style bracelet, just wouldn’t work for my style of dress, whether day or evening wear. For many months I tried many styles of alternative bangles, bracelets and charms, and I realized that no brand was really using high quality materials in the design and manufacturing of the products. Now the wheel began to turn.

My daily strolls through San Francisco with my daughter continued throughout 2013, along with lots of brainstorming about how I could improve the way I wear my Fitbit. After a few weeks of being consumed by my thoughts, I came up with the idea of fitjewels. I came up with the idea to design a brand of fit tracker compatible jewelry, that would eliminate the need to leave my Fitbit at home, while my husband and I have an elegant night on the town. Soon after, I enrolled in a jewelry making course taught by a local SF artist, and within weeks my own designs and handmade pieces started to come alive.

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