Reflective Jewelry

After nearly three decades in business, the owners of Santa Fe-based Reflective Jewelry have endured the many challenges of entrepreneurship, including three recessions, but the biggest challenge of all was theft.
 
But Helen Chantler and Marc Choyt are thriving and recently had their best year in 10 years after an employee embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and nearly bankrupt the business.
 
Chantler, a self-taught jewelry designer, created the company in 1994. A year later, her husband, Marc, quit his high school teaching job and took her 25 two-tone, gold over silver designs and drove across the country, cold selling her jewelry.  
 
“We knew nothing about business and got a lot of great early help from SCORE and other small businesses programs at the time,” Choyt said.
 
With some wholesale success, they began attending trades shows. Between 2000 and 2010, the company had continual double-digit growth. Their product was in over 250 stores and they employed 14 people. “We were working 60-hour weeks, barely keeping up with the growth,” Choyt said.

In 2011, the couple discovered that their bookkeeper had been lying about financial information and was in the process of destroying records in an effort to bankrupt their company. After she was fired, they found she had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars. Registered letters from IRS began appearing. Payroll tax had not been paid. They also owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the IRS and the state, and had substantial debt on their credit cards.

“We naively trusted this person almost like she was a family member – she ran our company, even took care of our dog when we were on the road,” Choyt said.

Employee fraud, however, is very common among small businesses. An employee is 15 times more likely than a non-employee to steal from an employer, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. Employees also account for an estimated 44% of theft losses at stores. And nearly a third of business failures are related to employee theft or fraud, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Reflective Jewelry was almost one of these failed businesses.

Eventually with the help of their attorney, the couple was able to settle with their insurance company while local authorities refused to prosecute the thief. Though the insurance settlement helped, the couple still fell far short of capital to keep the doors open and business had dropped off considerably due to the great recession. No bank would provide a loan to them because the bank couldn’t properly assess their home.

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“At our time of greatest need, The Loan Fund stepped in to provide working capital,” Choyt said.
 
Over the last several years, Reflective Jewelry has reinvented itself, now focusing on custom design, with many sales via their website while continuing to maintain their brick and mortar store.  With a five-star rating on Google, they had their one of their best years ever in 2022.

“At our time of greatest need, The Loan Fund stepped in to provide working capital,” Choyt said.

The couple paid off the initial loan in 2015 and recently took out a new line of credit to purchase a high tech laser for jewelry fabrication, but currently have no long-term outstanding debt.  
 
Widely recognized for its activism and pioneering ethical sourcing work over the past 18 years, Reflective Jewelry is the only Fairtrade Gold jeweler in the entire U.S. The company has also received numerous recognitions, including Santa Fe Green Business of the Year and the Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America’s top honors in the Responsibly Sourced Design Challenge.
 
“We can create a wedding and engagement ring that in its very sourcing offers people the option of wearing their commitment for a better world,” Choyt said.
 
Though the embezzlement is still tough to talk about, the couple is thankful for the business relationships built on trust.
 
“The Loan Fund is one of our organizations in New Mexico, one of the few, that still provide a much more humane and community-oriented financing option,” Choyt said. “And I’ll always be grateful for Joe Justice, Leroy Pacheco and Joaquin Amador and their services to small businesses and the communities and families they support.”