Dillon Rose was created from a desire to explore how art can connect us, inspiring and deepening our human experience. The first piece of jewelry I ever made was traded for tacos from a street stand in Mexico City. I was 18 at the time and I remember a distinct feeling of empowerment engaging in commerce in a creative way. The idea that something I made could be used to create a relationship of mutual support took root. I’m constantly learning more about the nuances of silver and gold, the way the metal behaves and what I can create with it. As I hone my skills and grow my expertise, the way I create has become more diverse but always focused on communicating a reverence for the natural world and the love we all share as humans.

Our path has been far from straight. Seth and I both come from humble beginnings and both chose an adventurous path of exploration, foregoing the college degree, discovering more about ourselves with each new experience. When I traded that first piece of jewelry for tacos I was living in a school bus with a half-dozen other creative souls in Toluca, near Mexico City. Seth had started from Oklahoma on a bicycle about four months before. He headed South and we eventually met up in Mexico City, continuing together on bikes into Guatemala. I would set up in public markets and sell earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Meanwhile, Seth would entertain locals and tourists with an acoustic guitar and the music of America's Heartland. We slept in hammocks, ate tacos, climbed volcanoes, and made friends everywhere. As wonderful as our travels were, we missed the feeling of home. After returning to Oklahoma, we attempted a life as farmers with a jewelry side-business. Neither worked because both required our full attention to be successful. We left our last farm in 2015. That same year, our second child was born and we married our middle names, Dillon and Rose, into a love child of a business.

I continued to develop my skills as a silver and goldsmith, growing my expertise as a gemologist at the same time. One thing was for certain, I still had plenty to learn when it came to running a business. Being the ‘live in the moment’ adventurers that we were, we hardly even used the internet before founding Dillon Rose. Neither of us had used Facebook or Instagram. To say we had a lot to learn is an understatement. Luckily, traveling the world has a way of putting you in many unforeseen situations and demands the ability to adapt, learn new skills, and create solutions. Seth has the mind of an engineer (he’s one of those that can literally figure out how anything works) and our first year in business he designed and built our first website himself. He mastered product photography and learned the lay of the Social Media land while I was busy at the workbench. We took turns caring for our young children and stayed up late reading books about entrepreneurship, brainstorming how we would continue to bootstrap this dream of ours. It wasn’t easy, but we shared a passion for it. That creative passion continues to drive us to build the best jewelry in the world to this day.