Statista said the global jewelry market was around $270 billion in 2022. These figures are expected to hit a whopping $330 billion by 2026, which shows how lucrative this industry is.
Do you want to start a jewelry business and explore this lucrative industry? If so, this guide will help you make your dream a reality.
The best thing about this industry is that you can focus on something other than high-end jewelry that requires thousands of dollars to start. You can start your small business even with the DIY handmade crafts you’ve been making as a hobby.
You can also buy premade pieces or work with a manufacturer to produce unique pieces. Either way, the market is there for you to grab.
To make things easier for you, here is a comprehensive guide on how to start a jewelry business. Go through the steps to identify the best way to start and run a successful jewelry business.
Table of Contents
Find your Niche
Like starting any other type of business, you need to find your niche. The jewelry industry is quite broad, and you can only serve some of it.
It includes numerous categories, from simple handmade pieces to exquisite pieces made from some of the rarest gems and stones.
For this reason, you need to pick a specific niche—decide what type of jewelry you will sell. For example, choose a fashion jewelry niche or fine jewelry niche.
Note: Each category attracts different raw materials, customer bases, and prices. The production process also differs depending on the type of jewelry being made.
Some great jewelry niches you can choose from include:
- Affordable fashion jewelry
- Plated jewelry
- Fine Jewelry
- Handmade Jewelry
- Vintage Jewelry
- Body Jewelry
Identifying your unique niche of interest helps you create a brand identity and initiate targeted marketing activities.
Researching Market Trends
Choosing a niche or category to pursue is just the beginning. Now, you need to study the market trends, which includes a better understanding of your target audience.
Learn about the current jewelry market trends by reading blogs, following influencers, or even looking for inspiration from seasoned designers.
One thing you should always do is to soak yourself in knowledge. This will ensure you don’t dive into the market unquestioningly and regret it.
Finding the best designs across the market can help you develop the best jewelry designs for your business.
Remember, making it as a newcomer in this competitive industry requires you to present unique pieces with strong aesthetics and branding.
So, don’t be afraid to learn and experiment.
With that knowledge, you can hire a branding expert and a designer to help produce the best designs.
Create a Business Plan
Starting that jewelry business requires planning. A business plan is a roadmap showing your current position and where you intend to be.
It outlines everything, including your goals, how you intend to achieve them, and how to counter the challenges that try to deter your business’s progress.
Luckily, there are numerous online templates for good business plans that you can use online. Look for one that matches your jewelry, and then draft your own. Your business plan should include:
- Vision and mission
- Products to sell
- Customers to target
- Budget and funding
- Customer service
- Marketing
- Branding
- Pricing
- Suppliers and resources
- Team
This gives you a comprehensive look at your business, allowing you to see the future of your jewelry business and plan for it.
Create a Budget
Every new business needs a budget. You need to know how much money is required to start the business and compare it to the expected income.
The costs of starting your business include equipment, utilities, labor, marketing, supplies or raw materials, and licenses and permits.
In your budget, ensure that your expected sales revenue exceeds the costs of starting and operating your business.
That’s the only way to ensure profitability.
If the costs are high, you have several ways to increase revenue. Firstly, you could raise the price of your jewelry, mainly if you deal with high-end pieces.
However, something other than this approach might work better if you focus on the affordable jewelry market.
Think of something else, like growing your sales volume. This way, you can generate more income without hiking the prices of your jewelry.
Also, try to minimize production costs to increase profit margins.
Register your Jewelry Business
Before you start designing or producing your jewelry, it’s wise to register your business first. This makes your business legal and gives you the go-ahead to operate.
Registering your business involves several steps. You must choose a business structure and name, register the company, and apply for an EIN.
When choosing a business structure, consider one of the few available, including a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, or corporation.
Each structure attracts different requirements, obligations, and benefits. Study each carefully to see which best suits your business dreams.
After that, choose a name, ensuring you don’t infringe any trademarks.
Use the USPTO to search if your name is used or trademarked by any other business.
Registration for your business requires you to file necessary registration documents with your state’s Secretary of State. Once your business is registered, you are ready to start design and production.
Find Funding
Your new business needs resources, especially money. So, determine where you are funding your business from.
The source of your capital should be handled during the business plan stage.
At this stage, you evaluate your resources, what you need, and where to source the funds.
Most people plan for this by setting aside some savings. But in some cases, more than the savings is needed.
You can look for extra funding using the following avenues if this is your case.
- Taking a personal loan
- Utilizing your credit card limit
- Applying for small business funding
- Applying for Grants
- Seeking Angel investors
- Finding funding from family or friends
- Tapping into your home equity
However, most lenders prefer to lend money to new businesses. Companies with a good credit history and stability are more likely to be trusted.
Set Up your Workspace or Studio
If you plan to produce the jewelry yourself, you need a workplace. Most people start with small business studios in their houses and upgrade later.
However, if you intend to have a team, you must create a more spacious workplace accommodating all your team members and equipment.
When setting up a workspace, consider a few things. For example, your space needs proper ventilation and adhere to safety guidelines.
This is because some chemicals and equipment you’ll use in your jewelry production process demand it. Confirm what you ought to do according to your local laws.
Additionally, your workplace should be spacious enough. If your production involves several steps, consider maneuverability, which requires space.
Also, you need enough space to hold the equipment and your team.
Lastly, have a storage space. You could build multi-compartment storage to safely keep your jewelry and the small pieces required in production.
Design and Manufacture
You have several options here. You can make jewelry pieces by hand, collaborate with a manufacturer to produce unique pieces, or source premade pieces from manufacturers.
Handmade jewelry can be unique, cheap, and a great way to monetize your hobby. However, ensure you produce high-quality pieces. This way, you’ll be able to compete with the numerous sellers in this overly competitive market.
When making your designs, you can source raw materials online from sites like:
- Amazon
- Etsy
- Manufacturers
- eBay
These sites make getting everything you need to produce those beautiful jewelry pieces easy. And if you are ordering premade jewelry, you can check out these sites:
- Faire
- Alibaba
- Abound
- DHgate
- Handshake
However, before ordering, do your research. For example, ensure the manufacturers or wholesalers offer quality products or materials.
If you want to penetrate or position yourself strategically in the market, you want to establish a brand known for its quality products.
Invest in Professional Photography
The jewelry industry is highly competitive. Therefore, showcasing your precious pieces in the best possible light if you want to sell them is crucial.
One of the best ways to stand out is to use high-quality images. You must invest in professional photography and photo editing.
The images should capture the jewelers’ brilliance, beauty, and intricate details. An expert can capture the item’s glint, sparkle, and texture more than an amateur would.
High-quality images will increase sales and build trust with your customers. Therefore, when it comes to jewelry, always focus on photography. Hire a professional to ensure that the photos depict the best appearance of your jewelry.
You may also hire models, stylists, and makeup artists. This will give you a team that produces the best images. And don’t worry too much about the budget. You can always find affordable models or makeup artists looking for jobs.
Create your Online Store
Once your products or suppliers are ready, start working on your e-commerce store. Creating a store is relatively easy, especially if you are familiar with online business.
You can create your online shop on your website or choose one from various e-commerce platforms.
One important thing to note here is that your online shop is the image of your business that customers or the target audience get. Therefore, make it as appealing as possible—first impressions matter.
The online shop should have the following qualities:
- Easy to maneuver and find products
- Attractive to the eyes with well-displayed products
- Clear product descriptions and pricing
It should also include a blog. This is where you showcase your skills, expertise, and even customer testimonials and reviews. Such information helps build trust and confidence in your products among the target customers.
Start shopify Free Trial Today
As mentioned, if you have some coding skills, you can make your website using hosting platforms like Bluehost, WordPress, Hostinger, etc.
But if you don’t, you can opt for premade e-commerce stores on platforms like Wix, Shopify, or WooCommerce. These platforms allow anyone, even those with no technical expertise, to create an online store.
Open a Business Bank Account
Treat your jewelry business like any other business, no matter how small you are starting. Opening a different account for your business is the way to go. This helps to separate your finances from business finances.
Why is this so important?
First, it protects your finances from being consumed by business expenses or business-legal issues. Also, it simplifies your tax filing process.
You can also monitor your income and expenses with a separate business account. That way, you’ll always know when your business is doing well, and things are going wrong.
Start with a simple business checking account and ensure all the payments go through that account. Apply for business credit cards with time, as they help you earn various benefits and build your credit history.
Develop your Marketing Plan
Your jewelry pieces could be unique, have the best aesthetics, and be high quality and exquisite.
However, they will still gather dust on your store’s shelves if your target audience needs to learn about them. In other words, you must find ways to get the word out to the right audience.
Increase the visibility of your jewelry through the following:
- SEO practices involve optimizing your online store with keywords, meta descriptions, tags, and images. This helps make your site visible to search engines; in return, your target audience sees it.
- Social media ads and posts are the easiest and fastest way to get the word out. Almost everyone is on social media, whether on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter. Having the right social media strategy can boost your shop’s traffic.
- Content Marketing: Consider having a blog on your website. It can work miracles. To promote your pieces, create optimized blogs, webinars, and how-to guides.
- Google ads: Paid ads also help boost traffic to your site. The more people see your work, the better your site ranks on Google, eventually increasing sales.
- Affiliate marketing: Use content creators to generate more traffic to your site. They get a link to put on their postings, and anyone who follows that link to your store earns the content creator a commission.
- Email marketing: Compile an email list of your target customers and send them regular custom marketing emails. The emails could be about available promotions, discounts, or upcoming events.
Marketing is a crucial pillar of a successful business. Therefore, ensure that you do it right.
Build an Effective Brand
A successful business needs a rock-solid brand. And a jewelry business is not any different.
Subsequently, your next step is to work towards building your brand. People must identify you with a particular brand. A brand is your business’s vision, mission, voice, and story. It helps your customers relate to your business.
When potential customers can relate to your brand at a personal level, it is easy to convince them and turn them into buyers. Typically, fashion purchases like the ones for jewelry are made out of feelings and emotions, so ensure your brand evokes the right ones.
The best way to build a compelling brand is by:
- Telling your brand story
- Identifying your brand voice
- Branding (packaging, website, business cards, and logo)
- Unique brand name
All these aim at building a unique brand that customers can recognize and remember.
Scale Your Jewelry Business
Entrepreneurs start small and scale up as they learn more about the market. Therefore, feel free to start small or fear scaling your business.
When starting, your first customers will be those you know, mostly family and friends. You can then introduce your jewelry to local businesses like boutiques and salons. You’ll start getting referrals and repeat purchases if your products are what you say they are.
As the business grows, you can start pitching to larger retailers.
Open new branches, grow your team and expand your marketing campaigns. You can even target the global market, especially with your online store.
Use Automation Tools and Platforms
Automation tools are helpful in marketing and customer engagement activities. With the right tools, you can determine the best marketing messages to create, when to post, and who to target.
For instance, a tool like EcommerceBot offers ad automation and social management features.
The AI ads creation feature helps automate the creation and scheduling of your paid ads.
You can try Ecommercebot for free; no credit card is required. You agree to turn your E-commerce business into a success story by clicking the image below.
This ensures you get the best results with your Facebook, Instagram, or Google campaigns. It also studies the store’s activities and profiles the customers for targeted marketing.
On the other hand, the social media manager feature deals with your social media platforms.
What type of content do you post here?
When do you post? And how often do you post? The feature helps you devise the best plan for this.
Lastly, with the platform’s omnichannel chatbot, you can rest easy knowing that all your customer queries are handled best.
Sign up today to enjoy discounted prices and a 20% growth guarantee for your business!
