How to Start a Jewelry Making Business
Be it quartz or slightly quirky, jewelry is a hot market. Here is how to find your niche and get started selling gems.
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All that glitters doesn't automatically lead to gold. Though it appears to be a glamorous industry, the jewelry business, like any other, requires a serious time commitment on behalf of its proprietors. When starting out, care should be taken to scope out the competition, to study your target market, and to learn every bit that you can about your own product.
We spoke to several business owners who've taken different paths with respect to launching their successful jewelry endeavors. This guide will explore the intricate details of starting an operation, from the capital investment needed based on the scope of your business to deciding whether or not a physical store is right for you. Read on to learn how to successfully make your mark in this area of a luxury industry.
How to Start a Jewelry Making Business: Jewelry Education
Pamela Doyle, co-founder of Doyle & Doyle, a high end boutique in Manhattan's Lower East Side that specializes in estate and antique pieces, stresses the importance of receiving a strategic education about your product, be it formal or informal. She apprenticed with a dealer, and her sister and co-founder Elizabeth Doyle, studied at the Geological Institute of America.
David Gandy of Ecowrist, a New York-based company that he co-founded in 2007 with his wife Marquerite Hamden, says, "it's nice to do a study of the market to see what kinds of trends are out there. We didn't. We did it from gut instinct."
A merchandising expert can aide in the education process. Paola Delgado, founder of the New York based company Mujus, hired a professional to help her learn more about marketing jewelry and to show her how to organize items for display purposes. After this, she decided what her main materials and products were going to be (iconic pieces produced with biodegradable materials), and began assessing her competition worldwide. "Then I defined my market - who I wanted to be my customer, what was their price range, how I was going to create an experience for her to buy my jewelry," she says. "And based on that, I actually started working on what would be a collection to satisfy my market."
After educating yourself about the type of jewelry that you want to sell along with pinpointing your target market, take heed of other factors before diving in headfirst. What will your startup costs be? What are your materials costs? If you aren't handcrafting the product yourself, what will manufacturing expenses cost you? Is it more cost effective to manufacture your product in the U.S. or to outsource to another country? Should you open a physical store or are markets your best bet? Finally, are you prepared to handle vendor fees, licensing expenses, and other unforeseen costs along the way?
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How to Start a Jewelry Making Business: Pinpoint Your Start-up Costs
Jewelry can be made from a wide range of materials, from the most precious of stones to found objects. Thus, materials expenses will vary greatly. Likewise, some people may choose to aim for an expansive operation from the get go, while others will choose to build their businesses bit by bit along the way. Gandy, who is a voiceover artist and actor by trade, initially invested $2,000 into Ecowrist. This investment supplied his company with their first 100 custom made watches.
Carmella Ricciardelli, co-founder of the steampunk jewelry business Mama Can't Sing, started her business in Brooklyn in 2008 with nothing. Ricciardelli, previously a homemaker, says that she grew her inventory of jewelry built with watch parts and antique typewriter keys by frequenting tag and estate sales. Initially she only allowed herself a weekly budget of $30 to spend on materials. From the jewelry that she sells at the Brooklyn Flea, she reinvests the profits to replenish her inventory.
Doyle & Doyle also began as a scaled-down operation. During their first three years in business, the Doyle's were operating as dealers, not yet selling to private parties. "We were basically raising capital by selling and rolling it back into the business. Even after the store started, I had a second job for three years," says Doyle. "We didn't draw any salary from the business or anything like that. We rolled everything back into the business."
Of course, some designers will aim to enter the market at full-speed, thus requiring a much larger capital investment to get the ball rolling. Delgado, a former financial analyst with Goldman Sachs, estimates that $20,000 is a conservative estimate for the amount that one will need to open a jewelry business, even without a brick and mortar store. "I'm talking about setting up your website, setting up your merchant account, buying your machines, taking [the] risk[s] of selling inventory, [putting together your] stationary packaging, paying a photographer…," she says. In addition to these expenses, along with the possibility of employing additional help, jewelry sellers also need to have a budget and plan in place for the costs and travel associated with manufacturing the product itself.
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How to Start a Jewelry Making Business: Manufacturing Expenses
While some designers like Ricciardelli both design and craft their own products, more often than not, jewelry designers leave the work of building their physical product to other artisans. However, that expense in and of itself can make or break your profit margin.
