1. Art Jewelry Magazine Recommends My Ebook!

2. What's New at Home Jewelry Business Success Tips:
   Three great new articles

3. Featured Article:
   How to Handle Difficult Jewelry Customers

4. Get Your Metal Jewelry Tags on Sale Through Dec. 1

5. Neat Jewelry Related Website:
   Desiree's Desired Creations

6. Submit a Tip and Get a Valuable Link to Your Website

In the January 2007 issue of Art Jewelry Magazine (available December 5), editor Katie Streeter reviews my new ebook, Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth. She says:

"If you want to sell your jewelry at craft fairs or jewelry shows, don't pass up Rena Klingenberg's ebook.... Klingenberg offers practical tips for nearly every situation that might occur at a show and shares her insider knowledge of show requirements."

Here are three new jewelry business articles since our last issue:

1. Sell Your Jewelry Successfully at Competitive Holiday Markets
   Intense competition can make selling your jewelry at a crowded holiday market a discouraging experience. Try these tips for standing out and making sales in a crowded field. Fresh from selling her jewelry in a four-day holiday market, Cindy Cherrington of CC Creations shares her observations.




2. How You Can Benefit from a Craft Barter Exchange
   A craft barter exchange can be used in place of money in some creative ways to the benefit of all parties involved. Liza Schmitt of Craft Barter Directory has some barter ideas for you, and ways you can benefit from these trades.




3. How to Lose a Customer in Five Seconds
   Your jewelry website's home page has four seconds to load before your customer bails out. Will your page make it? Pamela Bruce of Love Beads Unlimited offers tips to help you speed up your load time and make your site more user friendly.

Share your own jewelry business story or advice, and build traffic to your website when you submit a jewelry business article. You'll receive a free permanent link from Home Jewelry Business Success Tips to your website - and your article will be read by thousands of people in the jewelry industry. Our guest authors report a significant flow of traffic coming from their article links on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips!

The vast majority of jewelry customers are a pleasure to serve. They're genuinely terrific people who are considerate of our time, appreciative of our work, and really inspire us to build a great jewelry business.

Unfortunately, however, there's a very small minority of customers who are difficult, demanding, or unreasonable to work with. Although they're few and far between, difficult customers can cause major headaches and even a loss of profits if we aren't prepared for them.

Here are some ways to handle those few difficult customers gracefully, without damaging your jewelry business.

Being prepared for difficult customers in advance can really help minimize their impact on you and your jewelry business.

As one of the start-up steps for your jewelry business (or as soon as possible if you're already in business!), I highly recommend that you decide on your customer policies for issues like

• guaranteeing your work


• altering/adjusting/resizing jewelry


• refunds


• exchanges


• custom orders


• payment


• pricing for your time


• haggling/bargaining


• discounts


• freebies.

Determining your policies ahead of time enables you to make the right call when faced with unexpected situations or unreasonable customer demands. You'll have well-thought-out guidelines to fall back on instead of relying on your first impulse.

In contrast, it's much harder to make good a business decision if you've never considered your refund policy until a difficult customer is standing in front of you with the mangled remains of the bracelet she bought from you two years ago, demanding her money back.

It turns out that she dropped the bracelet in her driveway and backed up over it with her own car. Now she wants to return it for a refund because she can't wear it.

If you haven't had this customer yet, just wait - you will!

When developing your customer policies, keep your good customers in mind as well as your difficult ones. It's important to balance the need to protect your business, with the need to provide exceptional service to your customers. Use your policies to set boundaries that are reasonable and professional.

For one customer policy example that protects both the jewelry artist and the customer, see Custom Jewelry Orders.

When you're presenting your own handcrafted designs to the public, the things people say and do can bruise your self-esteem a lot more than they would if you were just displaying a manufacturer's jewelry line. And that can make customer service issues much more difficult and uncomfortable to handle.

But even though it's hard not to feel hurt or insulted when confronted by a rude or unreasonable customer, staying calm and objective is the most professional and effective approach.

Remember that what the customer says and does reflects on him, not on you. And anything you say or do reflects on you.

So instead of taking things personally, focus instead on solving the problem at hand. Difficult customer situations are problem-solving occasions!

When business is slow and you're desperate to make a sale, it's very tempting to make concessions and allow customers to make demands on you that are not necessarily in the best interests of your business.

But be careful, because if you go against your usual policies, you'll be setting a precedent you may regret. If you waver on your established policies and pricing even once, people will assume they're negotiable.

And when other people hear about the concessions you granted to one customer, they'll be upset if you don't grant the same favors to them. Some people will even try to push your boundaries to see how much they can get out of you.

If you start down that path, you'll wind up with customers who walk all over you.

One jewelry artist told me about a wealthy customer who evidently decided she wanted a "personal jeweler" at her beck and call. The customer believed that, after buying a necklace from this artist, all sorts of services were due to her at no additional charge - such as having the new necklace re-designed for her several times, and having several pieces of heavily tarnished antique jewelry cleaned and repaired by the artist.

Because the jewelry artist was trying to get her business started, she tried hard to accommodate this woman. She thought that taking good care of this wealthy but demanding customer would pay off in the long run in the form of more sales and referrals.

Instead, she quickly found herself losing money and time as she continually ordered more supplies to re-design the necklace, and struggled to meet the customer's other demands on her time. Finally she had to accept the fact that this was not a customer she needed.

It's usually best (and most professional) to decide how you want to operate, and stick to your plan.

The old adage, "the customer is always right" is not always true. Sometimes you wind up with a customer who drains your time, energy, and profits, giving you nothing in return. No matter what you do, there's the occasional customer whose needs or desires no one can possibly meet, and who is determined not to be happy.

If you have an unreasonably high-maintenance customer who is never satisfied with your product or service despite your best efforts, it's time to politely encourage him to go elsewhere. In other words, you need to fire him before he costs you any more resources.

However, firing a customer isn't an easy choice to make, nor one that you feel good about afterward. It's hard not to have a sense of failure when you let a customer go, even though the situation was not necessarily your fault.

Before discharging a customer, it's a good idea to do everything you can to clear up any misunderstandings between you. In a polite and professional way, listen to the customer's concerns, and then explain why you don't think you are the right jeweler for him. Offer him some good alternative jewelers who you think may be a better fit for what he's seeking.

Why should you go to all this effort with someone who's been a royal pain?

Because bad word-of-mouth publicity from this difficult person is something you'd really like to avoid. So it's a good idea to be as positive and helpful as possible as you cut your ties with him.

Because you can't be all things to all people, your jewelry business will run more smoothly if you know which types of customers to pursue and which to avoid.

Take some time to think about the kinds of jewelry projects and services you enjoy and excel at, and then work hard at attracting and keeping the type of customers who are the best fit for you.

Also keep your antennae out for the type of customers you DON'T want, and head them off at the pass. The best time to avoid entanglements with difficult clients is before making a sale or an agreement with them.

If someone wants a product or service you really don't want to provide, makes unreasonable demands, or balks at your prices or policies, realize that this is a can of worms you don't want to open. Politely tell this customer that you can't meet her needs, suggest another business that may be able to help her, and head off a problem before it starts.

This strategy will help you grow a profitable and enjoyable jewelry business by focusing your time and energy on attracting the projects and customers you do want to serve and keep.

Infinity Stamps is offering a special Jewelry Artists' Holiday Sale on the TagMate jewelry tag marking system.

If you've been considering attaching professional-looking, custom-stamped metal tags to your handcrafted jewelry, this is a great time to get them while they're on sale. Don't wait too long - the sale ends this Friday, December 1.

You can read more about metal jewelry tags and the TagMate in these two articles:

Metal Jewelry Tags

Blackening and Polishing Kit.

Happy tagging!

Desiree's Desired Creations is a gorgously photographed, fantastic website on polymer clay jewelry. In addition to extensive galleries of Desiree McCrorey's exquisite polymer clay creations, there are several clear and very well done polymer clay project tutorials.

If you're already a fan of polymer clay and its infinite creative possibilities, you'll be adding this site to your bookmarks. And if you never thought you wanted to make or wear polymer clay jewelry, Desiree's incredible work will open a new universe for you!

Do you have a good idea, handy hint, or helpful technique related to jewelry business or jewelry making? Send in a tip that's useful to jewelry artists and receive a free link to your website when your tip is published in the Jewelry Business Blog.

And thank you to the creative readers who have been sending in your truly excellent tips! Many of them have been published already, and more are coming. If you've sent in a tip but it hasn't yet been published in the blog - don't worry, it's coming soon!

Looking for specific jewelry business information or the answer to a question? Try our "Search This Site" feature to scour Home Jewelry Business Success Tips for any keywords you enter.

We have over 350 articles on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips now, and new posts several days a week in the Jewelry Business Blog - plus lots more coming up - and sometimes knowing where to find specific information among so many articles can be tricky. But now you can search easily and find what you're seeking.

If your search doesn't turn up any results for our site, then you've discovered a topic we need to add - so please let me know the info or tips that are missing from our site.