Gabriela Ceballos Jewelry
SoHo, New York City, United States

Every piece of jewelry at a Gabriela Ceballos store tells a story. At its famous Charm Bar, customers choose from dozens of rotating charms to design unique pieces that carry personal memories, milestones, or meaning. It’s exactly what founder Ceballos loves about the craft.

After moving from Venezuela to the U.S. in 2016, Ceballos started the business from the ground up, funded entirely by her savings. She set up folding tables at New York City street markets to display her original designs and used social media to get the word out. When the build-your-own experience went viral, customers started pouring in, allowing her to expand to more pop-ups and several brick-and-mortar stores.

Ceballos then faced the exciting challenge that many small businesses experience: growing the brand without losing the founding vision that made it special. She needed technology that was lean, mobile, and easy to scale. She found the solution with Apple.

The Charm Bar is a complex station to manage, consisting of hundreds of charms, assembled to order, across six stores and a dozen pop-ups. On the floor, staff members build orders on iPad with Shopify, and the inventory auto-updates every time a charm gets pulled.

With Tap to Pay on iPhone, the staff can take payments anywhere in the store or at a pop-up, with no extra hardware. The same iPhone is also used to manage social media channels. The team shoots content in the store, edits footage with CapCut, and posts within the same day, engaging with customers in real time.

In the back, Ceballos runs the business on MacBook Air, from designing new pieces to managing finances to updating an extensive library of live photos. And no matter what location she’s at, she can use Apple Business to set up new devices with pre-configured settings, apps, and storage so new staff members have everything they need, even without a dedicated IT team.

Apple Business also gives Ceballos control over how her brand shows up across apps like Apple Maps, which her team uses to update photos, hours, promotions, and events across locations, so customers always know what to expect when they visit a store.

For the beloved brand, it’s important that the technology stays low maintenance and adaptive so Ceballos has more time to do what she loves: connecting with customers and growing the business.