Ask any artist what their desires are, and they will always tell you that one of them is to let the whole world share in their works.
For jewelry designers, they believe that since jewelry can be adorable to customers, it can help to show their works to the world, thereby forging fresh links with grateful customers.
Each year, the global jewelry industry continues to grow, because of its great potential as well as the massive money-making part of it.
We’ve discovered that a lot of people are interested in starting a jewelry business but do not know how to begin. That is why we’ve developed this article to give you every information and steps on how to start a jewelry business.
How to Start a Jewelry Business
Step 1: Define Your Line
Just like most other businesses, if you want to start up a jewelry business, you must first have a clear understanding of what you are going into, and what it is all about.
You can do this clearly through a certain defined business plan. Don’t worry about its complex nature, as it mustn’t be, well, complex, as long as it defines your business agenda.
Writing a business plan enables an entrepreneur to organize their business ideas, take a record of their finances and resources, commence with the forging of market schemes, state their business objectives, and develop a game plan to help them realize these objectives within a short period.
Your business plan should be able to answer questions like, are you dealing on fine jewelry or trend fits, are your jewelry or pieces handmade or outsourced to a premium producer, are you operating from home or office, is it a one-man business or you will employ workers, what will be the price of your products, who are your target crowd, and so on?
Step 2: Legalize Your Business
Legalizing your business is very crucial, as it will cover every legal base to make sure your jewelry business is run aboveboard. If you’re operating from home, you can contact your local clerk’s office to get the necessary license and permits required for home businesses.
After getting an identity for your business, you can then choose a business entity and register it with your secretary of state. We’d advise you to go for a sole proprietorship, as it doesn’t need you to register with your state, but only requires applying as a ‘doing business as’, or DBA, except you chose to run it under your legal name.
However, with sole proprietorship, you’re not guaranteed any protection if your business encounters any legal challenges.
Therefore, it would be best if you register your business as a limited liability company (LLC), which is very easy and fast online. Meanwhile, with LLC, your assets are secured are protected from business-inclined legal problems.
Step3: Separate Your Business & Personal Finances
After legalizing, it would be best to separate your business and personal finances. It will be a good idea, as it will beginners to keep their private finances secured from business-inclined legal challenges, and also allow for easy tax-filing processes.
You can begin with opening a business bank account and make sure that what enters there are just business earnings. Another option is to apply for a business credit card, which is meant for daily expenses and other miscellaneous budgets.
Step 4: Find Your Startup Capital
Every business, whether big or small requires startup capital, added to the fact that, as a beginner, you would find it hard to secure business loans, be it from local banks or online loan agencies.
If you don’t have any financial history, creditors will not find any workable data that can help them to check a new business’ level of risk.
Because of this, startup capital mostly comes from your pulse. Most new business owners work their way up through their savings, loans or grants from friends and family, or personal loans from banks or online creditors whose finances can be used to grow their businesses and others like generous donations from people that believe in your project.
Step 5: Locate Suppliers & Manufacture Your Jewelry
Having succeeded in laying the required legal and financial bases for your business, it is now time to manufacture your jewelry for selling purposes.
If you haven’t done that already, you can start by buying wholesale jewelry-making materials and equipment, which includes adequate safety tools and the required materials for creating your jewelry.
It would help if you get the proper information from other jewelry manufacturers about reliable wholesalers, or put a little more effort into doing some extensive research about what you need.
You can also apply for a reseller license to save you the cost of having to pay local sales taxes if you buy in a larger quantity.
Step6: Sell Your Jewelry
After developing a strong inventory, the next thing is to locate a perfect place to trade your jewelry. It would be best if you make an online store your basic sales channel.
You can also try developing your store the Shopify service, thus making it easy for you as a business owner to form and manage their e-commerce shops.
The services mentioned above and more are regularly filled with essential features such as custom sales reports and analytics, customer relationship management equipment, and built-in marketing equipment.
There are other trustworthy online shops such as Amazon, Etsy, or eBay, which are basic e-commerce platforms where you can sell your goods.
They are more particularly valuable for new business owners because they are platforms where dozens of customers troop in and out daily in search of enticing products like jewelry, hence you can contact them for their built-in traffic.
They also provide the base through which you can test your products to see which of them make more sales, and at what price range.
Another enticing medium through which you can market your product is by investing in a professional photographer. The photographer will take pictures of your jewelry in bright light at various angles and both on and off a model.
However, you must ensure the photos are of high quality, to enable it to create a reliable brand. There are many ways to sell your products; just look for the best, and fast way you can make sales.
Step7: Establish Your Brand & Start Marketing
While you are creating your sales medium, you can also be developing your brand identity and activating a small-business marketing plan.
Designing a logo is a good beginning point, and it is very crucial in creating your business’ aesthetic. If you’re finding it difficult to get a good graphic designer, you can contact the services of several logo-making services online.
As your business grows, you can begin to apply paid marketing strategies such as Google Ads. But as a beginner, it would be best to take advantage of every free marketing technique you have, and you must make use of a social media marketing platform.
The platforms your customers engage more determine which platforms will bring success to your business. You can start with setting yourself up with a business Facebook page, Instagram, and Pinterest board, and ensure you insert links to your online shop in your bio.
If you want to get more traffics to your website through search engines, you need to ensure your site and blog are optimized for SEO. You can contact Shopify, as it provides standard SEO services.
But if you’re making use of another e-commerce or blogging service, then you will need to brush up on a few important SEO strategies, which you should take note of each time you create online content.