Kaori Shimada
designer and creator

Since 1990, Kaori Shimada, from Yokohama, Japan, has been designing and creating her own pieces of jewelry. After a school field trip to a local jewelry making store, is when Kaori wanted to design her own custom collections. Over the years of trial and error, she found a collection and theme that she loved. Inspired by her favorite flower, the cherry blossom, she wanted to make her love for cherry blossoms last beyond the festival season.

Her original designs were popular during the Cherry Blossom Season, and she would custom make her jewelry for only friends and family, or on special requests for bridesmaids at weddings. 

Kaori later married and moved to the United States in 2001. While being a home mother of four, she found some extra time and wanted to share her designs in America. Kaori launched her designs on the internet, and they were selling faster than she could make them, and customers were placed on a waiting list. Everyone loved the designs, but mostly wedding planners.

One year after opening her successful online store in 2003, she learned her designs were copied and mass reproduced in China. Even thought Kaori paid to have the design patented, it was too expensive for her to fight the international property rights infringements. Kaori lost her interest in selling online, but still makes jewelry on request. She still has a large inventory left over and it is taking up space in their home. After a few negotiations, she allowed her husband to give her jewelry another shot and sell out the last of her inventory exclusively on his website, TheSakuraCollection.com.