Bluboho, a Toronto-based fine jewelry company, was born from a desire to create jewelry and an experience worthy of the moments we are marking.
A female-led organization, Bluboho is noted for its creation of raw and refined pieces, deeply rooted in storytelling.
Today the retailer has five locations with a sixth opening this month in Ottawa. And it also has an ecommerce presence.
“My very first job out of university I was working for lululemon and it was before the company went public. So I moved quickly and had a really big job, moved to Toronto. I was managing southwestern Ontario,” said Maggie Aurocco, co-founder of the brand. “And I wanted to buy jewelry. My mom came up and wanted to buy me something for my promotion at work. We ended up going to Tiffany’s which was lovely. I ended up buying something everyone else had.
“I just thought that jewelry is so special, it’s such an intimate experience, it’s on your body your whole life and often it gets passed down to generations. There’s got to be something better. There’s got to be something where you can buy meaningful jewelry with a beautiful experience.
“My business partner at the time and I started having these conversations. There were lots of great jewelry designers that we loved so we sort of put them together. We started doing trunk shows and we would sell out of all of our product every time we would do trunk shows. We opened our first store in Oakville (in 2010) and the rest is history.”
Bluboho sells handcrafted jewelry and all of the pieces and collections have a deep, meaningful story, explained Aurocco. For example, currently the retailer has launched its Tree of Life collection. She said it’s all about grounding and connection.
“In our stores, it’s all about creating magic and a space for deep self reflection,” added Aurocco. “Jewelry marks some of our most intimate moments. Lots of them really good but some of them not so good. We mark birthdays and engagements and weddings and also sometimes divorce and death.
“So having a really intimate, beautiful space filled with great people and great energy and flowers and beautiful merchandising, beautiful artwork so people can come in and kind of have a pause or a reprieve from life – just having that time for self-reflection, having that time to pick a beautiful, meaningful piece.
“It’s just me. I own the company. We don’t have any outside funding or investors or anything. So we’re just going at our own pace right now. I love that because it just means we can continue to do everything within the integrity of our core values. We’re going to continue to grow.”
There are two stores in Toronto, one in Calgary, and one in Oakville. There’s also a seasonal pop-up location in Muskoka.
In terms of the company’s name, Aurocco said ‘blu’ was incorporating the sea and sky and the feeling of reflection and possibility while ‘boho’ was for that spirit of travel and lust for life and soaking in all of those moments.
