7 Steps to Starting a Jewelry Business

Here’s how

Building an online business takes grit and dedication. Today the internet affords us the opportunity to start many different kinds of businesses that we can profit from without going into an office.

So you want to start your own online jewelry business?

As a wholesale jewelry business, we have the tips and help you need to get started for a comparatively small investment.

Decide on your brand

A brand is aspirational; when you sell a brand, you sell the lifestyle that the brand stands for. Your brand is what sets you apart from other online jewelry businesses. What are the qualities that you want your jewelry line to be known for?

Some different words that come to mind are quality, elegance, exotic, eclectic, fun, creative, and simple. Choose only 3 qualities that you want to be known for the most so that they are memorable. This is your elevator statement about your brand.

Decide on the brand name using ideas such as family names, a description of the experience, or make up your own word!

Making a mood board on Pinterest with different images of what your brand represents will help focus your energy on the colors, typefaces, images, and styles that you are bringing to your customers. What kind of person will shop at your store? A person with a boho style? Punk style? Preppy style? Let your brand be niche and specific; this is how you can capture people because your message will deeply resonate with them.

Your brand needs to be memorable and easy to spell so that people can find you online.

Enlist a wholesale company to provide your product

You might decide to start your own handmade jewelry shop, and that is a beautiful goal. However, it can be challenging for people who make handmade jewelry to fill out their inventory and give their customers enough options to choose from.

Ask Andrea Ayers, who started a t-shirt company that was wildly successful! She bought the t-shirts wholesale and sold them as part of a brand for yogis.

The best way to fill out your inventory and jewelry lines is to add wholesale jewelry to your product line. ELF925 Wholesale has the most high-quality silver jewelry that you can find on the wholesale market and our products are all sterling silver or stainless steel. Your customers will think of your brand as high quality and worth the money that you are charging when you include this type of high-quality jewelry in your product lines.

Create shops on various retail websites under your brand

There are so many outlets and places where you can sell your jewelry brand.

• Etsy is a handmade and vintage jewelry website. It has a large community and there are many people who make their living on this platform.
• eBay has different ways that you can sell your wares. You can sell at an auction, which you might try when you are just starting out. Or you can also sell as a “buy now” option which means that the price is fixed.
• Sites like Poshmark which sell used jewelry could also work for you.
• When you have an inventory, it will be helpful for you to have sales coming in from various places.
• Your website will need to be your main hub for where you sell from. In order to make this happen, you will need to market heavily. Some ways to market are to work with “influencers,” or people who have many social media followers and who are able to influence others through their recommendations and their words.
• You can write guest posts on jewelry and trends on websites where your target audience hangs out in order to drive traffic to your website. Make sure that you are consistently driving traffic to your website.
• Amazon is a huge marketplace with competitive prices. You will want to research if it is worth your time to compete on Amazon. Your competitors may have a hold on the prices and in the market. In some markets, the prices are very low, and in others they are fine and you can make a good living.

Buy your wholesale collections

Decide what kinds of jewelry styles and metals you will specialize in. You can create a brand based on certain symbols, a certain color of metal, or a certain lifestyle or look.

Who are your customers? Who is in your niche? Create an avatar of your ideal customer with the following questions as a guide:

• How much money does she make?
• Where does she live?
• What is her lifestyle like?
• What does she do for fun?
• How often does she indulge and treat herself?

Once you create your ideal customer avatar, you will be a step closer to deciding what kind of jewelry you will be selling.

Think of your ideal customer when you are deciding on the symbols, looks, and metals that you sell. In our wholesale collection, there are so many different styles of jewelry that will match any of your avatars including Swarovski, charm bracelets, rings, pendants, and more.

Then, you can look through our many categories of different kinds of wholesale jewelry and choose which ones align with your brand’s messaging.

Photograph the collections

You will need beautiful photographs of your jewelry in order to make them appealing on the internet.

You will want to have a large variety of product images featuring the products you have chosen from different angles and close-ups, as well as a lookbook that shows the lifestyle of your customer avatar. This is like a catalog shoot that your customers will be able to relate to and see themselves in.

In addition, make sure that you have reviews and stellar product descriptions. A confused customer with questions is hard to sell to. With product descriptions that answer all your customers’ questions, you will have a much higher conversion rate.

To receive online reviews of your products, you will need to run promotions. Here are some promotion ideas:

• You can give away free jewelry to some customers in exchange for reviews.
• You can run a promotion with a discount for customers who write reviews.
• You could give coupons out to customers who write reviews. They can use these coupons on future purchases with your company.

Images are everything on the web, as we can see from the popularity of applications like Pinterest and Instagram. These are great places to promote and market the beautiful photographs of your jewelry.

You will need to take photographs with models to showcase the lifestyle of your brand, and you will also need product shots that are clean and professional to display the beauty of the items in your jewelry line.

Market your online store through various channels

Marketing is the most important way you can make sales. Without marketing, you will have no sales. You will need a marketing plan including the top four ways you will approach marketing. There are many different avenues and channels that you can use, but focusing on your top four marketing channels will help you be successful and get results instead of being scattered.

How are people going to find out about your company and your brand?

Talk about your jewelry business with your network every chance you get. Reach out to your network and tell them that you have started a new venture, then give them the information about it so that they can look it up and buy from you.

Sell

Selling your jewelry will require that you are a good salesperson. Fortunately, our wholesale jewelry is easy to sell because it is incredibly high quality. It’s made of stainless steel and sterling silver with no nickel. It is mostly hypoallergenic (besides rose gold pieces, which can’t be hypoallergenic anyway because rose gold has copper in it).

Selling is about helping someone get what they want. When you frame it in this way instead of thinking that you are selling because YOU need something, selling becomes a lot easier because you are being of service. When you decide how you are being of service through selling, it will come naturally to you. For example, you could say “I help women upgrade their wardrobes and feel great about themselves.”

Online

Through good online marketing, you will be able to build momentum and sell your jewelry line.

Some tools in your toolbox should be Google Adwords, retargeting, and affiliate advertising. Also working with online influencers on social media can tremendously with driving traffic to your site

At local stores

While you will of course have an online presence, you can also work with stores in your local area to carry your jewelry. This will help you gain traction in your local market, let people know that you have started a new jewelry company, and they can pass it on via their social networks and word of mouth.

You can also sell your jewelry line at local fairs and parties to get the word of mouth out there. When you sell at places like this, always have your square ready to take payments at the point of sale to make it easier for customers to get the pieces that they want.