Making Jewelry Your Customers Want to Buy

Making jewelry is fun - and selling it can be both rewarding and profitable. You’ll sell more of your handcrafted jewelry if you concentrate on making jewelry your customers want to buy as you follow your artistic intuition. But how do you find out what jewelry people want to buy?

One way is to keep up with fashion trends, in both clothing and jewelry. Before ordering new jewelry making supplies, look through current magazines and clothing catalogs, visit trendy clothing stores, and browse through websites of fashionable clothes and jewelry.

What’s being promoted in terms of upcoming colors, moods, products, materials? What areas of the body are being emphasized? What’s being touted as the “must have” styles or accessories? What pieces, themes, or styles do you see over and over?

Also do some quick research in your latest jewelry supply catalogs. They usually have a section on their latest findings and products for making jewelry.

By studying these pages and visualizing how the latest supplies could influence new pieces that fit in with your style, you'll probably come up with even better and more beautiful jewelry than your customers will see anywhere else.

Another way of making jewelry your customers want to buy is to create a line of jewelry that fills a particular niche. Here are a few examples of making jewelry for niches that have a definite market:

- religious jewelry incorporating symbols or elements of a particular religion

- school spirit jewelry with particular school colors and possibly with school mascot charms

- horse jewelry

- butterfly jewelry

- metaphysical or crystal jewelry

- awareness jewelry (breast cancer awareness, AIDS awareness, etc.)

- mothers’ bracelets with children’s names on them

- copper jewelry

- birthstone jewelry

- body jewelry (see Tips for Adding Body Jewelry to Your Line)

- wedding jewelry, including bridal tiaras

- antique reproduction jewelry.

A third way of making jewelry your customers want to buy is to create versatile pieces. Versatility is a very popular feature in jewelry, and here are some examples:

- necklaces with extenders to make the length adjustable

- earrings with changeable dangles

- necklaces that can also be wrapped around the wrist multiple times to make a bracelet

- chokers with changeable pendants or dangles

- watches with changeable bands

- a set of stackable rings or bracelets.

And the fourth and most obvious way of making jewelry your customers want to buy is simply to ask them what jewelry they’d like you to add to your line! Ask what they look for but never find anywhere. It may be post earrings, a particular kind of earwire, pins, triple strands of beads, certain colors—you’ll never know until you ask them!

For more information on making jewelry your customers want to buy, you may want to have suggestion or feedback forms available at your booth for customers to fill out; it’s also a good idea to have a feedback area on your jewelry website as well.

You may also be inspired and entertained by guest author Janice Wee's articles:

The Ice Cream Stick Earrings
Earrings made from found objects were one of author Janice Wee's top sellers in the costume jewelry business she operated as a boarding school student. Now, years later, she shares her design secrets.

Making Bracelets for Fun and Profit
Janice Wee began making bracelets as a child. Here she shares those early experiences along with two bracelet making tutorials.

Here are more articles with ideas for increasing your jewelry sales:

Develop Your Own Jewelry Style
Having a unique jewelry style is one of the factors of a successful jewelry business. Should you specialize or diversify in your jewelry designs and materials? Guest author Dvora Schleffer discusses the advantags and disadvantages of each approach.

Tips for Adding Body Jewelry to Your Line
Ideas for adding your own embellishments to body jewelry for some hot selling items! This is a strong market that not many jewelry artists serve.

Tips for Selling Gift Certificates for Your Jewelry
How to increase your sales by offering jewelry gift certificates. Tips for an easy record keeping system for the gift certificates you sell.

Relationship Marketing Tips for Your Jewelry Business
How to use relationship marketing to grow your jewelry business quickly and effortlessly. What makes your customers remember you and return to you again and again.

The Animal Jewelry Market Niche
Animal jewelry is a major market niche, and a great gift item. Here are some of the most popular motifs and styles of animal jewelry.

Jewelry Inspiration
When you're in need of new jewelry inspirations, try exploring these resources to fill your creative reservoir with impressions of color, culture, nature, and other wonderful design-starters recommended by Shelly Richardson.

Enjoy getting to know your customers' needs before making jewelry.

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