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Contents of this issue of
"Jewelry Business Success News"

1) Fall 2004 Colors

2) What's New at Home Jewelry Business Success Tips

3) Article: The Quality of Your Jewelry Supplies and Tools

4) Interesting Jewelry Related Website: Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry Terms

Fall 2004 Colors

Now that the Fourth of July is past, the fashion world is turning its attention to Fall. What colors can we expect to see?

Early indicators show that many designers are keeping the recently trendy orange as an important color. Soft greens that are less sage or lime than in recent years are also forecast. Shades of berry are used in many designers' palettes this fall, as are ice blue, slate gray, and a buttery shade of buff.

What's new at
Home Jewelry Business Success Tips

Don't miss these great new articles that have been added to Home Jewelry Business Success Tips since the last issue of Jewelry Business Success News! -

I'm delighted to present our newest guest author, Kathleen Badeaux (formerly of Ruby Lane Shops' Designs by Kath). Kathleen sent in this interesting and insightful article via our new "Submit Articles" page:

Tips for Purchasing Designer Jewelry within Your Budget . . . or how customers and jewelry artists can work out a transaction together Designer jewelry can be out of a customer's price range. Guest author Kathleen Badeaux explains a way customers and jewelry artists can work together, for a jewelry transaction where everyone wins. This article, presented from the customer's viewpoint, details an interesting approach to custom work.

Also, we have a second article from guest author Tony Blacker of Niknakgroup.com Jewellery. Here's Tony's newest article:

Make Money on eBay by Knowing the System - Guest author Tony Blacker outlines how you can make money on eBay by understanding its system, following eBay's seller rules for building repeat customers, and keeping your listing fees down. This article has some great tips for profiting from eBay, including a way to make the most of the "free auction listing" days.

The Quality of Your Jewelry Supplies and Tools

by Rena Klingenberg

When I first started making jewelry, I always purchased the cheapest beads, jewelry supplies, and tools, believing I was saving money by shopping so frugally.

For example, I started out buying D grade freshwater pearls, thinking I was saving a lot of money compared to purchasing A grade pearls. But one day when I received a shipment of D grade pearls, I saw that the strands in this batch were of an even poorer quality than usual. Each strand had only two or three barely-usable beads, with the rest all pitted, scratched, missing their nacre, and badly drilled. They weren't even fit for junk jewelry.

I returned all pearl strands in that batch to the supplier, and ordered A grade pearls in their place. When I received the new batch of A grade strands, I couldn't believe they were even considered to be the same type of stone as the D grade! They were gorgeous, evenly shaped, creamy in color, with beautiful nacre and precise drilling. And almost every pearl on every strand was usable.

After a quick calculation I discovered that a strand of higher priced A grade pearls, which is nearly 100% usable, results in a lower price per pearl than a D grade strand with half or less of the pearls usable. And the A grade pearls made a HUGE difference in the appearance of my finished jewelry, enabling me to price it higher.

I did some math and realized that I had been spending more per pearl for a lower quality, which dragged my asking prices down. Hmmm, not much of a bargain.

Unfortunately, this was a lesson I had to learn twice.

Shortly after that, I was making a line of bead bracelets with a lobster clasp, for a distributor. Because the profit margin was so thin, I switched to cheaper lobster clasps to make the job more profitable for me.

Big mistake! The new cheap clasps kept jamming and breaking, and dozens of bracelets were returned to me for repairs. As you can imagine, replacing the cheap clasps with higher quality ones cost me a lot more in the long run.

So I finally learned the moral of the story: Low-quality supplies make low-quality jewelry. And it's not worth risking your professional reputation as a jewelry artist, just to save a few dollars on supplies.

I decided then and there that I do not want to be known as the artist whose jewelry falls apart! :o)

I urge you to learn from my mistakes and use the highest quality jewelry components you can afford.

I know that when you're first starting out, sometimes you can't make jewelry at all if you don't use the less expensive, lower-quality supplies and tools.

But as soon as you are able to, switch to higher quality components. The less expensive things are a false economy. Cheaper findings fall apart easily, cheaper beads and stones make jewelry that isn't as attractive, silverplate and goldplate wear off quickly, cheap crimp beads break and make jewelry fall apart, dyed beads and stones bleed . . . and none of this enhances customers' impression of your work.

Cheaper tools break and become useless faster, causing the extra expense of replacing them repeatedly. And they're hard on your hands and wrists, causing repetitive stress injuries that at best are expensive to treat, and at worst can put an end to your jewelry making career.

In short, the quality of your supplies is directly related to the quality of your jewelry. And to the income of your business - higher quality pieces command higher prices.

Okay, I'll come clean and confess that there was a fairly recent occasion when I re-learned that cheap supplies are not the best deal. I fell for a "bulk cabochon" deal that sounded too good to pass up.

When I received the cabs, at least half were too microscopic for me to wire-wrap; a quarter were terrible quality or just plain ugly; and a quarter were attractive, decent quality, and usable. So I paid a bargain price for a batch of cabochons where only 25% were usable.

Let's see, that makes the price of each usable cabochon . . . a little higher than if I'd just ordered a few high quality cabs to begin with.

And that's the last time I'm going to put myself through that lesson. :o)

Neat jewelry related site

Our interesting jewelry site to visit this time is All About Jewels - Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry. It's a fascinating, gorgeously illustrated, and very informative online dictionary of jewelry terms. I wanted to read every entry in this lengthy and comprehensive resource, and drown in the pictures. You'll surely find several new terms you never knew before, and lose track of time while you're there!

Share Your Jewelry Business Success Tips and Receive Permanent Free Advertising for Your Website

We're inviting you to write an article for Home Jewelry Business Success Tips, in exchange for some free advertising for your website. (Don't worry about your writing skills - I'll be happy to edit your article if necessary.)

Our guest authors' experiences, tips, and techniques add so much to this site that that we'd like to continue to add authors to make Home Jewelry Business Success Tips the best possible resource for jewelry artists.

In exchange for publishing your article, we'll put a link to your website on your article's page here, which will help boost your site's search engine rankings and traffic. Each article will be a permanent page on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips, so its link to your site is a permanent free advertisement for your business. Our guest authors say their websites receive a good flow of traffic from their links here.

For more information, please see Submit Your Jewelry Business Tips Article.

Visit the Jewelry Business Blog

Stop by the Jewelry Business Blog for the latest tips and information about the business of jewelry art! And feel free to post any questions or tips of your own - just use the form at the bottom of the blog to post your comments; I'll add them when I do the next blog update.