|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
 |
Tracy Janik is part-owner of AJ Raefields. She has been selling jewelry on the internet since 2001, and currently maintains five stores with more than 16,000 pieces of vintage and new jewelry between them! Tracy's parents owned a Restaurant and Gift Shop in the 1970s-1980s which carried all kinds of jewels, including designs done by Tracy's mother, Edna Freeman. Through liquidation of that stock, as well as some zany jewelry belonging to Tracy's sister, Lisa Dorfman, Tracy started her eBay enterprise! Her jewelry business has become a full time activity with many employees. Tracy is involved with all aspects of the business, from shipping to marketing, but specializes in training new employees, editing, and general management. She tries to keep up her jewelry education and can be seen at places like Jewelry Camp and the VFCJ Convention. |
|
|
John Janik is Tracy's husband and the other part-owner of AJ Raefields. He has a full time job as an Engineer with Ulbrich Shaped Wire, but still finds time to do all sorts of work for AJR. The whole business would not exist without his unending support and enthusiasm. He single handedly maintains all of AJR's technology. From our first "hand-me-down" computer to our current eight networks, his IT knowledge has evolved as the business has grown. He is an expert on SEO and is constantly showing us where we could use improvement (but you know how it is, we are girls, we DON'T always listen!). He spends all of his free time researching technology and internet trends. We could not do it without him! |
|
|
Edna Freeman is Tracy's mother. She has a lifelong love of jewelry and fashion. Edna and her husband Gil had a restaurant and gift shop in the 1970s and 1980s called "The Place". The gift shop featured antiques, wicker, Asian imports, and Edna's jewelry. Edna designed beaded gemstone jewelry and later got into faceting stones and metalwork (in both silver, gold, and non precious metals). She visits periodically and spends her time doing jewelry repair, rhinestone replacement, and other restoration work. Edna is always up for jewelry education and can be found with Tracy and other members of the staff at VFCJ functions and jewelry camp. She is always a pleasure and we have great fun with her!
|
|
|
Sandy DiCicco is our current Number 1. She is Office Manager as well as Chief Assistant in charge of working out all the little details. Sandy started more then a year ago in our Shipping Department, but has since moved up to our primary position. She oversees everyone's projects and is the "big picture" person who knows what everyone is doing and working on at the moment. Most customer support is actually going to Sandy who resolves all issues and looks up all those little details for you. Sandy also does our daily maintenance such as minor repairs, stone gluing, and clasp fixing. Sandy has spent a semester at FIT in New York, and is our current expert in Fashion Trends. She is a consummate writer and writes a lot of the verbiage you see on our special pages and press releases. One of Sandy's interests is craft and artist jewelry (look for her own designs in the future!). Aside from her work here, Sandy is a full time student as an English major at Central Connecticut State University. |
|
|
Amber Carrier is currently wearing two hats. She still retains the position of shipping manager and has done quite a lot of work to become our new Graphic Design Coordinator. All the current web design and html work can be attributed to Amber. As this is some of her beginning work, I can't wait to see what is in store for her future! Amber worked here as one of her first jobs when she was 15. She is back now with a vengeance! Not only is she working hard by day, she is also completing her senior year of High School by night! She is working with us full time 8 to 4, and is off to night school as soon as her day here is over, and for that we are truly proud of her! She oversees daily packaging and does postage and invoice reconciliation in addition to her job as Graphic Designer. All of our sites have been completely revamped thanks to her hard work and dedication!
|
|
|
Jaimie Wisnoiwski has the distinction of being our FIRST employee! Jaimie is John's cousin and started here as her first job helping with packaging and writing advertisements. Jaimie is excellent at computers and is a very quick learner. After a hiatus at Hollister and other jobs, she has just started back with us recently. She is currently our Shipping and Inventory person handling all aspects of packages and inventory management. She is a wonderful Photographer and is truly patient when laying out complicated jewelry items. She is a true perfectionist and her photos certainly attest to that. Jaimie is also busy writing advertisements for us. She is interested in Graphic Design and HTML and has hopes to do some work in that direction in the future. I can't wait to see what position she winds up in!
|
|
|
Sarah Miller is our current staff humanitarian. She is in charge of our eBay Giving Works projects, including researching each new spotlight, carefully choosing charities that not only need our help, but also are meaningful to us, contacting the heads of those charities, writing the listing pages, and creating separate pages dedicated to those specific foundations. Sarah has moved up in line, and has worked for us since High School, when she began by writing ads and doing inventory. Sarah now attends the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, IL, and helps us in her spare time. She is such a wonderful human being with a huge heart!
|
|
|
Corrine Dempsy is our restocking and organizing guru! She has saved us from a lot of extra work by painstakingly organizing our huge collection of vintage name jewelry. Thanks to her we can actually find things around the office! She works for us part time, and attends school full time at night. She hopes to attend Tuxis College in the fall...hopefully we can keep her around!
|
| |
|
|
|
Amanda Briggaman is a Fine Arts graduate from University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus and was our Full Time Photography and Graphics Manager for almost two years. She started as a Staff Photographer but quickly took on more and more responsibility. For more than a year she was ALSO our Number One in charge of general office management. A substantial number of our photos and designs were done by Mandi. She is also an Adobe Illustrator expert and has helped to lay out various articles which we have submitted to the VFCJ Magazine. Mandi is currently a Digital Artist working with Art Rich Photography. Amanda also does freelance photography and design. Mandi was instrumental in the development of our 2006 development of 247 Jewelry and Bakelite Johnnys. Amanda has been helping us out part time helping us get jewelry photographed. We still call Amanda in for special projects and visits! Check out her site at www.silveressencephotography.com.
|
|
|
Ashley Maciborek has been with us for quite some time. She started here at age 15 as her first job! Ashley has done just about every job in the building. She started in the shipping department and moved on from packaging and inventory to ad writing and photography. She can use everything from Word to Excel, as well as Photoshop. She is also amazing at Quick Books, and is great at data entry and bank reconciliations! She is looking forward to graduating this year and attending college in the fall. She is also a slave to fashion and has maintained our teen jewelry trends and blogs in the past. We always look to her for current teen fashion inspiration. Ashley is an incredibly hard worker and fast learner, which has allowed her much success here. Ashley is currently dedicating her time to finishing her senior year, but she finds a few extra minutes here and there to help us out.
|
|
|
Casey Casserino is our multi-cultural girl and exchange student! Casey has worked here off and on for more than 2 years. Casey started in the shipping department and currently writes item advertisements when she is not off being an exchange student. Casey was lucky enough to spend her Senior year of high school as an exchange student in Taiwan. Casey did a program in China at the end of last summer; she also spent last semester in Japan, and has returned to China this semester! Casey is in China until probably August but we understand she will come back to work as soon as she is back in the country! (We have her searching China for awesome deals) Despite her busy schedule, she is here getting items onto the internet for us during her breaks. Needless to say we are constantly consulting her on Asian symbol jewelry. Boy were we surprised to find out that most of the Rhode Island jewelry designs are not real Asian symbols at all!
|
|
|
Eryka Sajek worked here as her first job! Eryka started at the bottom, the shipping department. She has done almost every job in the office, however her sojourn with photography was short. Eryka has a love of fashion and all things vintage. She has been writing most of our vintage jewelry advertisements for three years now. Currently a Sophomore at Hofstra University on Long Island, we tend to let the vintage items pile up for her return home from school. She is the one who writes all those fun fashion blogs! Eryka spent last summer as our Number 1, and is an excellent project manager as well as office manager. She holds the distinction of completing every half finished project we had from 2006! Unfortunately while she was at school we managed to half finish a bunch more! Eryka is doing a dual major in Psychology and Sociology with a minor in Fine Arts. She is well rounded woman who is one of our companies biggest assets!
|
|
|
Kelly Harrington was one of our earliest employees, working here as her first job with working papers! Kelly is attending Smith College in Northhampton, MA. She is a brilliant girl, currently double majoring in Chemistry and Math, is a Chemistry intern at Sherwin-Williams in their raw materials department. Kelly started long ago in our shipping department. She has also helped out on the management end of things on Quickbooks, and has a knowledge and love of vintage jewelry. She has also written many a jewelry advertisement. For some quirky reason Kelly's first love is packaging and inventory! We save all our large inventory projects for her vacation's from Smith. The current packaging person is always happy for the reprieve.
|
|
|
Lisa Pham is another one of our geniuses. Lisa attends Trinity College in East Hartford, CT. Lisa is in her last year of her degree and plans to go on to get a PHD in Math. Lisa is an awesome photographer and artist. She was a traditional photographer until starting here. Her foray into product photography has given her an appreciation for digital photography. Lisa was a Staff Photographer here for 2 summers, and also helps out with photographing on her breaks from school. She can pump out photographs like nobody's business! She is currently doing the best she can to help us get as many items photographed in her spare time to add to our inventory!
|
| |
|
|
|
Danielle Wisniowski is a graduate of Newbury College in Boston, Ma. She worked for us in the shipping department and on many of our "Full Inventory" projects. Danielle was the Assistant to the Director of Admissions at Newbury College for a year. Her love of fashion and business has found her as a Manager of a Hollister in South Carolina. She plans to come back to Connecticut and attend law school in the future. We wish her lots of luck and miss her very much!
|
|
|
Ethan Beschler is currently attending UCONN Storrs, CT as a finance major, but his first love is music! What a guitar player! His high school band the "London Classics" were awesome! Ethan worked here in the shipping department. I do not have to tell you all the girls loved him! Both the Beschler boys were fantastic help, we sure miss them!
|
|
|
Jamie Moshier was our FIRST "Number 1"! She started here just after college, a graduate of Central Connecticut State University. Jamie handled all aspects of item listing, as well as office management. Jamie pumped out all kinds of jewelry listings! She was amazing! Jamie was also in charge of the early USPS Postal automations...The dreaded "XML" files, which really required patience and accuracy (nothing Tracy is good at!). Jamie also coordinated the efforts of the other employees and interviewed perspective employees! She wound up moving on to an excellent job as a recruiter! She's a brilliant girl that we owe a lot to! |
|
|
Jennifer Lagosz attends Muchlenberg College in Pennsylvania. Jenny's majors are too numerous to list, but I will try: Psychology, Accounting, Business & Economics. Jenny is a vibrant girl for sure! Jenny worked here when she was home from school. She was in on a number of "Full Inventories", wrote advertisements, and was instrumental in a number of pilot projects. She also went to auctions and bid on jewelry. (Boy did we have an advantage with her bidding!). She organized one "Brick and Mortar" type attempt when the girls split up into two groups and did different Flea Markets on the weekends. She was always coming back from the Elephant Trunk with free stuff, and somehow had a regular place in the front row, although she was always there late! She and Tracy also did the hated "We Buy Jewelry" project, doing house calls generated from classified ads. We had great times with Jenny and miss her and her enthusiasm!
|
|
|
Kathryn "Kat" Chieffo was our Graphic and Html Design Coordinator and Chief Photographer. She handled all aspects of graphic design and page layout, as well as a bulk of the product photography. Kat has a true gift for page layout and getting many ideas across in a simple, uncluttered format. She is a doll to work with, we all love her! She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Keene State College, and used this job to exercise her inner artist. One of Kat's primary interests is photography and web design. Her knowledge of photography and lighting is superior. We have also called upon her knowledge of biology in trying to get hard-to-see hallmarks photographed with a microscope! She has recently gotten a job as a Manufacturing Technician at Microtech Test Labs.
|
|
|
Meghan Schneider is currently a Sophomore at Catawba College in North Carolina. Meghan was great friends with Kelly and Eryka. She worked here (when she was not rehearsing for the school play) in the shipping department. She also helped out in quite a few total inventory projects! A thankless job, but we were sure glad to have her. |
|
|
Molly Felth wins our most eccentric girl contest!! Molly has attended numerous universities in NYC, most notable was Eugene Lange. Molly was key in some of our "Full Inventory" projects and did flea markets with Lisa Pham. Molly is a good friend of Lisa, Sandy, and Eryka. The most notable day with Molly was when she wrote an essay for a local oldies station trying to win free lunch for the office. Her essay was all about how we listen to Vintage music while processing vintage jewelry!
|
|
|
Zachery Beschler is a genius! Zach never worked for us full time, but was our hmtl and internet consultant. All the very difficult hard code work, java script and other design was done by him. Zach is currently at Virgina Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia studying Graphic Design. Zach is always a pleasure to work with. I know he is available for free lance work, check him out at: http://www.druckermedia.com/.
|
|
All these people have made huge contributions to our "Jewelry Metropolis" a big thank you to one and all. We have missed an employee or two; we either did not have a photo or were not able to contact them. To all former employees not listed, email us so we can get you in! We do our best to have a positive influence on our employees and love to see them move on to bigger and better things!
Thank you all - John and Tracy Janik |
) 
