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Originally published January 19, 2018, this post captures a little piece of CMD production history and one of the many ways we've adapted over the years to take care of both our jewelry and the people making it.
Back in 2018, one of our amazing production gals in New York was struggling with a really long commute. Sam loved being part of the CMD team, but spending nearly an hour and a half commuting every day was becoming too much. That's a lot of time to spend getting to and from work, and we knew there had to be a better way.
After some team brainstorming and good planning meetings, we figured one out. We got Sam set up with her very own home jewelry studio in Cortland, New York. I was thrilled that we could make it happen, and CMD Outpost #3 was officially born. Cute, right?
At the time, calling it an "outpost" felt fitting. CMD was growing beyond a single studio, and we were figuring out how to make jewelry across different locations while still maintaining the craftsmanship and attention to detail that mattered so much to me.
Looking back, I love seeing these early versions of the production model we were building. There wasn't one grand plan for exactly what CMD would look like years down the road. A lot of it happened by paying attention to what our team needed, solving problems as they came up and finding ways to make the business work better for the people inside it.
A lot has changed since this little Cortland outpost came to life in 2018. We've moved studios, changed coasts and gone through plenty of different versions of CMD along the way. What hasn't changed is that our jewelry is still made by real people, with real hands, and there is an incredible amount of work happening behind the scenes before a finished piece ever reaches you.
That's one of the reasons I love keeping stories like this in the CMD archives. A little home jewelry studio in Cortland might have seemed like one small solution to a long commute at the time, but it's also part of the much bigger story of how our production team grew and evolved.
Here's to finding better ways to make it work,
Colleen
© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.
Published: January 19, 2018
Updated: August 13, 2026
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