How to Succeed in the Jewellery Business

Since many of you are in the jewellery business, thought I would share some ideas on how to make money out of the jewellery business. The jewellery business in South Africa, and I suspect worldwide, is poor at the moment. The wholesale shop near me where I took my first couple of classes in beading, closed down last month because the market is so poor. On the brighter side, most businesses are battling at the moment. This just means you have to be smarter. Let me start with some pointers: 1. Try to do something a bit different from the other jewellery makers. This is how I started with bead weaving. The black people in SA did a lot of bead weaving, but most of their jewellery had the same style. The white people considered it a black art form and didn't really take an interest in it. This gave me a gap to experiment. When I did research on bead weaving on the internet, I found most bead weavers use tiny beads which are extremely time consuming to work with. Instead of using these small beads, I started to design with larger less time consuming beads. 2. Find a suitable market for the style of jewellery you are producing. If your style is for young people, try to market where young people are. I found my bead weaving style best suited to middle-aged middle class arty people. The very rich, seems to prefer diamonds, gold and silver. The youngsters are conformist and like to wear what the fashion houses sell. 3. Test your market to see which style, colour and price-range works best for you. Do this by making a range of jewellery and show it first to your family and friends that support you, then to your broader client base. Ask for sincere comments and listen to advice from trustworthy friends. 4. Evaluate your time that it takes you to make the jewellery. Bead stringing is much less time consuming than bead-weaving. For bead stringing, I found you could spend a bit more money on good quality beads (especially if you buy in bulk) and still make a profit. For bead weaving, your cost are mostly your labour. So your price will depend on what you are prepared to work for. I do most of my bead work in my spare time and find I simply cannot charge people proportionally what I charge for my maths classes. It would be too expensive. 5. The only advantage you have over the majority of shops that sells jewellery, is that you can custom make your jewellery. Make sure when you market your jewellery that you emphasize that the customer may choose the colour and style beads that suits them best. Provide your customers with a variety of choices and listen to what they have to say. 6. Advertising can be very expensive and could become a bottomless pit where your money simply disappear. Use cheap means of advertising and be prepared to make a concerted effort to market your goods. Carry a photo-album of your jewellery and business-cards permanently with you. You never know when the opportunity will arise to make a sale. You need business-cards. This is essential and relatively inexpensive to have made. Shops often want such a big cut on the price of your goods that it either becomes too expensive to sell or you make no profit. Crafts markets are a good place to market your goods. Pick a market where there will be a lot of feet of potential clients. Make sure your display is attractive. This need not be expensive. You need a simple table cloth that is properly seamed. I use a grey colour which display my bead-weaved jewellery best. What also works well is to have one or two overlays in contrasting colours. Drift wood or just any wooden stumps works wonderful for displaying your jewellery. I picked some nice stumps from our fire wood last winter which I use for my display. Tourist spots are also good places to market your goods. Tourist often want to buy memorabilia and have money to spend. 7. The quality of your beads is not as crucial as the quality of your work. If a necklace came undone while a client was wearing it, the client will be very disappointed. If you use cheap beads make sure the colour do not fade of come off on your clothes. Most of the cheap seed beads are made with glass and are fine to use, but I have had bad experiences with metal coated beads where the coating wear off. I have also had bad experiences with plastic beads that stained my clothes. Another problem with cheap Chinese beads are that they are not evenly sized. It can become time-consuming and costly to sort the beads into acceptable sizes and you have a lot of wastage (unless you do bead-embroidery where these come in handy). Test the strength of your jewellery and beads before selling it to ensure the quality is good and avoid disappointment. It is difficult making a living out of solely selling handmade jewellery. I strongly recommend that you look into other options as well. I will share some alternative products and sources of income in the next few blogs. Cecilia Rooke