Sell Your Handmade Jewelry Post 1

Our first step in selling our jewelry in stores is to have a portable, well organized collection featuring our pieces in a variety of styles, colors and prices. This will allow us to quickly present our jewelry in an organized, professional manner that buyers or store owners can examine while you point out why the heck they should sell your lovely jewelry instead of the mass produced, identical (bad word) that most stores stock. 

Do you have that already? I didn't. In the past I put together portfolios of boards that had pinned jewelry to them. Which is fine, but didn't offer the full range of skill I had so I needed to invest in something larger.

These are available here for $95.

I purchased the hard rolling case so I could place lots of jewelry in it and know it was well protected but they also have soft carrying cases that are less expensive.

The rolling feature is a must for me as it hurts my back to lug stuff around and this is heavy once it is filled.

Take a few minutes to see if you have a local store that carries this case to save on shipping.

Now let's fill it!

I like to use a combination of open trays with velvet board inserts and smaller compartment trays. The combination allows me to arrange the open boards as they were magazine pages or a Sundance Catalog web page with complimenting pieces arranged with space around them. The smaller compartments allows for bangles and carded earrings to stay separated.

 

To keep your jewelry in place on the velvet open boards you will need u-pins.

Just trust me here, the first time we went out with my artfully arranged case, the company I ordered the u-pins from were back ordered and I went ahead with my case anyway. When we arrived the trays were a jumbled mess that just embarrassed me and wasted both the buyers time and our time by needing to untangle the chains and earrings before making the presentation.

I needed to go somewhere else for u-pins and found them here at Beadaholique.

(Stay focused here, you just need the u-pins!)

I use approximately 2 to 3 pins per piece so make sure you have the correct amount .

They are sharp and I hurt myself several times trying to hurry and poke them into the boards so beware.

I'll admit, this "composition arrangement" part is fun for me. I have often imagined being the owner of a shop and having windows to beautifully arrange. This is close to that task.

How you arrange your presentation board is up to you and your personal style, but keep in mind the Rule of Thirds to help you balance and keep each board simple rather than cluttered.

Once you have the case stocked and pinned in place, you need to create a price list and organize it so you can easily reffer to it while your buyer asks questions.

I start a word document and label it with the collection or color that indentified that tray.

I then purchased avery labels and printed the trays corresponding label that I could stick on the outside of both sides of each tray. This helped me locate the correct tray quickly whether it was placed into the hard case the right way or not.

Of course you can also hand write them!

I then listed the pieces in the pinned order of top to bottom with short descriptions and a price;

1.) Verdigris Waterfall necklace with handmade ceramic beads $75

For EVERY piece and EVERY tray.

I have a tendency to go blank when I'm nervous and this list is helpful in keeping me focused on the important details.

Continue on with your trays until you have logged each piece and its price. Print these out, staple them together and place them in a manila folder inside your carrying case.

We will be adding a few other important documents to this folder at a later date.

A few notes on pricing;

I hate it. I hate when people ask me for advise on it. I would rather give stuff away than try to figure out pricing. But that doesn't allow us to buy more supplies or help pay the bills, so I will try to do my best here. 

1. I pay myself an hourly wage because I have years of experience and it didn't come cheap or easy.
2. I charge for retail pricing on the parts and components I use but I look for deals, sales and easy to make components so that I have a higher profit.
3. I have a list of overhead that is divided up to the hour for every month.

That means all the bills we pay to keep our business running is added up, than divided by a 29 day month and then that number is divided per 8 hour work day.  

So if you work 2 hours on jewelry and pay yourself $15 an hour plus $9 to cover overhead you have a total cost of $48. If you are able to complete 6 pieces of jewelry in that 2 hour period and the parts per piece come to $12, divide $48 by 6 and add that onto the $12. 

$20 would the wholesale cost for that particular piece. 

Now this would be different for each one of a kind piece of jewelry you make and you will need to spend more time pricing and charging for that additional time and rarity.

At this point I consider the percentage the store will be getting for selling my work for me and add that percentage on.

Most stores have a 40/60 percent contract and you would need to add $8 onto the $20 piece to pay them and still keep your hourly, overhead and supplies.

(Now this is a small scale example and your artisan jewelry should NOT be going for that low of a price unless that is its value.)

  But you're not in this just to break even!

So consider the overall value, current trends, uniqueness and presentation of each piece before adding your profit. This is highly subjective and takes a little bit of research to get it right for your particular style.

Adding professionally printed display cards, cellophane packaging, adjustable sizing, personalized options like birthstones, personal stories, meaningful quotes and other fine details cost money and should be considered when determining the overall value of your piece.

I have shared this link before but let me share it again here;

http://marketingjewelry.blogspot.com/

Dave is my main man in advise for selling and pricing your handmade jewelry.

His site and blog contains a huge amount of helpful, applicable advise based on actual experience.

PLEASE do not just book mark it but take the time to read and research something you deserve to be successful at!

Okay! So that is our first step.

 I am doing this with you and will give you time to finish these tasks before posting the next steps; Drafting a sales letter, assembling samples and putting together a contract.

(Don't worry, I've got a lawyer for this one!)

The next post will be on the 12th of June. This gives us 2 weeks to purchase our case, stock it with collections of jewelry, log our inventory and print out our price list.  

We can do that, right? 

Don't think about the actual face to face talking part just yet, we are not there and we do not want the sick feelings in our stomach to stop us or enable us to make excuses.
So we will just concentrate on putting together a killer ensemble of our awesome jewelry!