Jewelry Business Success News is written by Rena Klingenberg, publisher of Home Jewelry Business Success Tips. This issue brings you more of the latest information and tips on marketing your jewelry and running a successful jewelry business.

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Contents of this issue of
"Jewelry Business Success News"

1) What Do You Think? Jewelry Business Decision Survey

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

3) Featured Article: Experimenting and Evolving My Way to Jewelry Business Success

4) Interesting Jewelry Related Website: LongLocks Hair Sticks Boutique

What Do You Think?
Jewelry Business Decision Survey

This week I received an email from Susan Meehan that raises an interesting issue. Susan asked:

"My friend and I are starting a silver jewelry home party business. I was wondering if you recommend doing an inventory of the jewelry before you leave a hostess' house. If so, is there any quick method. We have been at a couple home jewelry parties and the inventory is huge. Do you have any suggestions? Is it even necessary? Thank you."

I sent this answering email to Susan:

"Regarding inventory at home parties, I think the easiest way would be to arrange your displays so that all rings are together, all bracelets together, all pendants together, etc. so that you can make a quick count of what's left in each category as you pack up.

"However, I've never had a problem with theft at a home party - but I do agree it's possible. Since guests tend to be friends of the hostess, they're less likely to commit a crime in her home. But it's not an impossibility, and taking inventory would certainly let you know if everything's accounted for at the end of the party.

"But if it turns out that something *is* missing, what do you do? Making an issue of it to the hostess or in front of all the guests would put a damper on the party, and would probably guarantee that you'd have no more parties scheduled from that group. And if the missing piece wasn't stolen but turns up later dropped between the sofa cushions, it would be awful to suggest that someone at the party had committed a theft and then be mistaken."

What's your opinion? Should jewelry artists take inventory at the end of our home parties? And if we do take inventory and find something missing - what (if anything) should we do about it? Please send your thoughts on this to me and I'll report back with all the opinions I receive. Feel free to include your website URL and I'll include the link to your site along with your opinion!

See readers' insights and tips in response to this inventory tracking at jewelry parties question.

What's new at
Home Jewelry Business Success Tips

Here are the articles published on our site since the last issue of Jewelry Business Success News. First up are three superb articles by brand-new guest authors:

Home Business Insurance -
How much home business insurance coverage do you need? Guest author and home security expert TC Thorn of Home Security Information details considerations for determining your home based business insurance needs, and tips for getting the best deal.

A Jewelry Studio in My House? That Sounds Complicated! -
Guest author Ellen Leonard of Prophecy Girl Designs has some great solutions for a home jewelry studio. Inspirational tips for finding, clearing out, and organizing the space for your dream jewelry making center.

A Successful International Home Jewelry Business
How guest author Judith Isaacson built an international home jewelry business by bringing her family's 90-year-old jewelry company, Maurice Goldman Fine Jewelry, online with eBay.

We also have a brand-new section on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips. Judy Holt of The Torch Sisters requested information for beginning jewelry businesses, regarding "just about everything". So I'm introducing our newest section of articles:

Home Jewelry Business Management Tips -
A series of articles to help you painlessly navigate the jewelry business issues of taxes, finances, banking, insurance, accounting, business licensing, and law.

And our first article in this new section should be of particular interest to anyone in the beginning stages of a home jewelry business. (On the other hand, if your business is already established and you've skipped any of these steps, it's never to late to take care of them):

How to Start a Jewelry Business -
Easy but important legal and financial steps for setting up your successful home jewelry business. How to choose and register your jewelry business name, get your business license / permit, get your resale tax number, handle the IRS, and open your jewelry business bank account.

Stay tuned for more excellent guest author articles, plus some requested articles written by me, next time! :o)

Submit an article and receive a free, permanent link to your website!

Now for our Featured Article:
Experimenting and Evolving My Way
to Jewelry Business Success

I've discovered that a successful jewelry business involves continually experimenting with new things. That's the best way to find out what works and feels right for *you*, because there's no single correct way to run your jewelry business.

Sometimes these experiments flop - but there's no such thing as "failure" when they do. You're simply learning that something doesn't work for you. In fact, to stay successful you never really stop experimenting with new things, flopping occasionally, and evolving your business. I think of it as a growth cycle:

Here are some episodes from my own jewelry business journey; in each one, you can see how I tried something new, flopped at least once, and turned that learning experience into something positive that improved my business. And guess what? That's what I'm still doing! :o)

As I tell about my experiences, I'm putting in links to pages on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips that provide more information on each topic.

My First Art Show

When I first got into jewelry making, I obsessed on making gemstone bead earrings. Before long I'd made over 100 pairs of earrings but had never sold any of them to anyone, until a friend talked me into being in a tiny Christmas craft sale at her church.

I was so nervous before this little show that I almost made myself sick, so I never even thought about using any kind of jewelry displays or even a table cloth! I just laid out tons of my earrings mounted on earring cards on a bare table and sat on a chair behind it. Despite my initial nervousness and lack of jewelry displays, I made enough sales to have a sense of success.

However, looking around at the other tables at this first show, I realized that a professional-looking display could far outsell a random scattering of earrings on a bare table. So for my next few shows I experimented with different elaborate displays - and found out that fussy displays are a pain to set up and take down, and require a lot of closet space to store at home!

So gradually I evolved my jewelry displays to my current simple, streamlined setup, which looks professional, is lightweight and compact to store and transport, and stays loaded with my inventory and ready to go at all times. It takes me only half an hour or so to set up and take down my booth when I do shows, and now when a customer calls wanting to come to my house to look at jewelry, I can just whip out a nice display on the guest bed in only a few minutes.

Consigning to Shops

After my first show, I jumped into consigning and wholesaling my work to gift shops and galleries. A few months into consigning, I realized that letting each shop have dozens of pieces of my jewelry on consignment meant buying more supplies to restock my inventory, before receiving payment for my jewelry that was tied up in the shops.

Another flop-turned-lesson was jumping into every consignment shop that was willing to display my jewelry. I found that while some consignment shops are wonderful to work with, not all shops are reliable, and I struggled for six months to get payment and my unsold jewelry back from an inactive shop in another state.

Also, one of my local shops closed without warning, and although I managed to recover my unsold jewelry, it was in terrible condition when I got it back. The owner had carelessly shoved the unsold earrings, necklaces, and bracelets into a bag in a tangled mess, with earwires bent, necklaces snarled, and my handmade jewelry tags damaged and crumpled. These experiences taught me to be very selective about the shops where I consigned my jewelry - and to maintain great relationships with good shops!

Making Jewelry for My Market

Because I started out thinking of myself as an "earring artist" and not a "jewelry artist", I turned down lots of requests for bracelets and other pieces of jewelry. (Yes, I know, I'm embarrassed to admit I did that! But I'm sharing this with you to show what I mean about taking what we learn from mistakes to improve our jewelry businesses.)

So one of my earliest lessons was that if you want to earn money, you have to make jewelry that people want to buy, not just what you feel like making. When I realized that I could sell more by offering other pieces of jewelry to match my earrings, I finally diversified and began designing bracelets, necklaces, anklets, and pendants too. And although custom orders are not my favorite work to do, they can be very profitable, so I began accepting them too.

What I Discovered About Packaging

I thought offering gift wrap would be a nice idea. So I started out charging a small fee for jewelry gift wrap, thinking this would be a good add-on profit maker. But I didn't get very many takers for it. So I experimented with offering my customers free gift wrap, and found that by adding that complimentary service, I increased my sales and repeat business significantly. Now I provide a complimentary selection of different types of elegant pouches, boxes, and bags, which my busy customers greatly appreciate! Anything you can do to simplify your customer's life will make them remember you the next time they need to purchase a gift.

Struggling with Jewelry Photography

The farther I traveled into my jewelry business, the more important it became to have good photos of my work. So I learned through a great deal of trial and error how to get professional-looking photographs of my jewelry.

I got a cheapie digital camera and spent hours and days trying to get good, clear, closeup shots of my jewelry. After a lot of frustration, I finally figured out that this camera just wasn't capable of photographing jewelry, so I mastered jewelry photography with my computer's flatbed scanner. You can get some beautifully artistic jewelry photos with a scanner, and it's a quick and simple way to get great shots for your website, auction listings, or other literature. Recently I've also finally gotten a much better digital camera that's well suited for photographing jewelry.

Teaching Jewelry Making

One of the unexpected opportunities my jewelry business has brought me is teaching jewelry making workshops, which is very rewarding. I had never previously taught anything in my life.

But I learned through experimenting that workshops are a lot easier for me if everyone works on the same type of jewelry at the same time, instead of having a roomful of students each doing a totally different project and each needing a lot of help with every step!

And from learning that bit of wisdom, I came up with the idea for a jewelry workshop for little girls - bracelet-making birthday parties for girls. These parties are a wonderful market niche, and a fun way to spend a few hours while earning some good money for your time.

Your Own Jewelry Business Success

Creating your jewelry business and your own independent lifestyle is a thrilling journey. And the best part is that it's up to *you* to create it the way you want to live it. Keep experimenting with new things, and don't be afraid to have a few flops. Remember there's no "failure" to fear - just learn from your experiences and move on to something better.

I wish you all the best - and don't forget that the joy is in the journey!

Neat jewelry related site

LongLocks Hair Sticks Boutique is a wonderful, flavorful example of making an extensive market and website from a jewelry niche. The publisher of LongLocks has put forth a lot of effort to include nearly everything you'd want to know about long hair, with tons of helpful hair-related information of interest to her hair stick customers. And note how well her writing style complements her site. Also, this website's toll-free phone number made me smile - 1-87-RAPUNZEL. :o) A neat and heart-felt site!

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.

Search for Jewelry Business Info

I've improved the "Search This Site" feature for Home Jewelry Business Success Tips. Not only does it now work better, but it's also available from the bottom of the navigation bar at the left side of every page.

We have over 100 articles now (and we're growing fast!) - and sometimes knowing where to find specific information among so many articles can be tricky. But now you should be able to 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 - please let me know the info or tips that are missing from our site.

I don't think Home Jewelry Business Success Tips will ever be finished - I have at least a hundred more articles in mind (with more occurring to me all the time!). Plus we're now adding lots of awesome articles contributed by our readers! So as we continue to grow, our "Search This Site" feature will probably become an increasingly important tool to help you find the answers to your specific jewelry business questions.