5 Tips for Buying Jewelry Wholesale

Posted on 30. Oct, 2009 by in Buying Jewelry

You want to buy a piece of jewelry. Not just any old piece of jewelry will do, either. You want something different and unique. You aren’t interested in some run-of-the-mill, see it in every shop and catalog item. It’s got to be special. It’s got to be high quality. And you know it’s going to be expensive. Buying jewelry wholesale can deliver everything you’re looking for – unique, high quality jewelry with an added bonus: a fraction of the cost of retail. So, just how do you go about buying jewelry at wholesale prices? The following five tips can get you started and well on your way to becoming a satisfied wholesale jewelry customer.

Wholesale Buying Tip #1

You first need to find out what you have to do to qualify to buy jewelry wholesale. Sometimes a vendor’s license is required. Most times, but not always, bulk buying is a necessity. Often, you will have to deal with sellers in overseas countries. Each of these qualifications poses different challenges and hurdles to over come. Vendor’s licenses often come at a price. Can you afford the licensing fees? Vendors are most often required to submit tax forms every so often. Do you know what forms you need, how to properly complete them and where they should be returned? Do you have the time for forms and other paperwork? Bulk buys may not be your thing, especially if you are only searching for that perfect engagement ring or sweet sixteen gift. There are online suppliers that will sell single pieces, as well as jewelry fair or show vendors, but they require a bit of digging to find and contact. Do you have the time to Google through hundreds of websites to find the one that will sell you just one of whatever it is you’re looking for? Many overseas vendors sell at wholesale prices. When dealing with foreign sellers, several things must be taken into consideration – pricing, currency and shipping. What currency are the prices listed? That great ring may in fact cost closer to $4000 if the price listed is £2000. How will your payment be made? Most online sellers do accept credit cards or PayPal, but there are sometimes extra charges for handling “foreign” accounts. Lastly, consider shipping. How long will it take for your item to arrive? Can it be insured? Are the shipping charges going to negate your savings over retail prices?

Wholesale Buying Tip #2

Once you make the decisions that wholesale buying, is in fact, for you, your next decision should be where to buy. Again, a Google search can be most helpful in finding just the right vendors for you. Notice I said vendors, not just vendor. You want to comparison shop. Find similar pieces on several sites and compare their prices, their shipping policies and prices, and their return policies. If one or two sites stand out above the rest, then you can feel assured that you will be dealing with a reputable company. Just as you wouldn’t necessarily buy that special piece of jewelry from the local con artist pawn broker, you don’t want to deal with a slick Internet snake oil salesman, either. Most quality dealers’ sites will be listed with Better Business Bureaus, professional associations or other quality assuring organizations. If you aren’t familiar with a site’s accreditations, perform a Google on them too. Also, be sure that you are dealing with a “real” wholesaler. Most will ask for either your vendor’s license number, or a tax identification number. If a site doesn’t ask for these, flee as fast as you can close the site. An informed buyer is a happier buyer.

Wholesale Buying Tip #3

Be sure that the merchandise you are buying is the real deal. Educate yourself on how jewelry is made. Plated jewelry isn’t as high a quality as vermeil jewelry, which isn’t as good as solid jewelry. Become familiar with the terminology used to describe jewelry, too. Know what vermeil is. Learn the difference between a simulated gemstone and a chemically enhanced one. Don’t be fooled by imitations or wannabes. Don’t be afraid to ask question, either. If you can’t figure out an item’s description in the online catalog, contact the seller. A reputable seller will reply, hopefully with an answer to your query. If not, find someone else. If you are looking for a special, unique piece, you want it to be a quality piece, not a half-priced knock-off.

Wholesale Buying Tip #4

You’ve straightened out all you paperwork and become a wholesaler. You’ve searched out the sites that sell only quality stuff. You can spot a simulated emerald from the real thing at a hundred paces. Now, you’re ready to go shopping. Don’t buy the first piece that catches your fancy. Again, comparison shop. You may be able to find the item, or something very similar available somewhere else. Maybe even retail or from an auction site. And it may just be less costly somewhere else. Don’t just compare prices, either. Compare shipping, return policies, customer ratings and feedback comments. In short, narrow down your purchase to the best possible choice. It’s a lot of facts to juggle, I know. In the end, though, all your hard work will be worth it.

Wholesale Buying Tip #5

Find yourself at least one reputable local seller to deal with in cases of cleanings and repairs. Most wholesalers don’t offer repair services, and even the highest quality piece can suffer an unexpected break or bend. You certainly don’t want to have to pay shipping just to get your jewelry cleaned, either. A local retailer with a friendly face to go along with the service is a necessity.

Buying jewelry wholesale needn’t be a chore or a bore. It can be a rewarding and fun experience. You just need to be prepared for the adventure and ready for anything!

International-Silver.com is your one stop resource for quality wholesale body jewelry and more. Visit us online for a wide range of sterling silver, stainless steel, tungsten and titanium body jewelry.

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Buying Jewelry Wholesale for a Profit

Posted on 25. Oct, 2009 by in Jewelry Business Tips

First, it’s important to define success. In business, it’s called profit, where the total income less the total cost equals a profit (loss). If you simply love buying and selling jewelry, that’s great, too. However, the purpose of this article is to present a model for making money selling jewelry.

This article is intended for a wide audience of readers.

Direct Sellers – You have your own home-based jewelry business as a professional seller. Your target audience is your local community where you sell at local events, jewelry parties, and other creative ways.

Ecommerce store – online sales through auctions, wholesale or retail

Small Size Physical Storefront Owner – Typically a boutique or small fashion store

Medium Size Business Storefront Owner – Responsible for a region or chain of store
If you are a craftsmen this article is a great source to understand your buyer’s perspective on purchasing from you.

EXPENSES

Below is a list of expenses to consider when purchasing jewelry to sell.

Product design and development. This is my key point and thus first on my list to successfully sell jewelry. You can be very efficient at everything else outlined below, but if you have a product that nobody wants, you’re not going to make any money. As a small business owner, I spend about 70% of my time researching jewelry trends and fashion. I use to be more cost conscious but now my total focus is on value.

The cost of sterling silver/gold. Today, silver closed at about $16.50 USD per ounce on the world market. Two years ago, it was about $10.00

Delivery time. Buying direct from a local or distant craftsmen typically means at least 45 days from the time you send a deposit until the time you will receive your shipment. Tying up a lot of money can be very costly.

Payment terms. Small orders (less than $1,000) are typically paid for full in advance, less shipping and insurance. Larger orders are typically 50% paid when you place the order and the balance due when the items are ready but before the items will be shipped to you.

Theft/Fraud. It’s very disappointing to say but let me be clear that theft and fraud is a very serious issue to consider. It takes a lot of time to build a trusting relationship with suppliers and this is the major asset to achieve. I’ve had the following issues happen to me, learning as I go along:
- Suppliers over promise the quality of their goods
- Sending money and simply not getting any goods
- Lost shipments that were not insured
- Authenticity of items misleading
- Partial shipments
- The need to renegotiate a transaction because of “other expenses” such as “it took longer to make than we thought” or “the price of raw material is more expensive”

Shipping and insurance. The cost of your shipment from the supplier sent to you. Also, this is typically where vendors add some charges above and beyond what you pay.

Lost and Damaged Shipments. Once your items are shipped, there is always the risk of a shipment being lost or damaged during transit. If this happens, you’ve lost much valuable time

Import fees, broker fees. If you are importing jewelry, you will incur some kind of brokerage fees. There are also tariffs implied to certain goods.

Taxes. Collected for your local government on the sale of your item

Selling Fees. If you are selling online, you’ll have inventory management fees, domain registration, email accounts, transaction fees. On auction sites such as eBay, there are even listing fees and final evaluation fees.

Merchant payment processing fees. There is usually a set fee plus a % of the sale for receiving some kind of electronic funds as payments from you customer. For example, PayPal charges $0.30 per transactions plus about 2% per order.

Marketing Fees. How did you get shoppers to know about you. How much did it cost?

Set-up – Now that you have your jewelry, how are you going to set-up a display. Do you need to take photos? How about a shelf and jewelry display?

Storage. How are you storing your items. What the cost of your small room for running your business? If you have a large warehouse, there’s the cost of utilities and insurance.

Packaging Costs. If you are shipping your jewelry, how much is the bubble folder, bubble bag, box, gift wrap, bubble wrap, and shipping label. Small costs add up quickly when you are selling a lot of items.

Postage. The cost charged by your carrier to ship an order.

Personnel. What the cost to process a piece of jewelry from design and development through order fulfillment? If you are a small store, how long is it taking for you to do all of this? Take the total number of hours you spend selling your jewelry and divide but the net profit? How much are you making an hour and is this worth you time?

INCOME

The sale price of the item
Up-selling to include packaging, gift wrapping. Typically about $6.00 for a nice gift wrapping per order.
Handling fees. Typically based on per order or per item. There is usually a minimum fee.

Gilbert & Frech is a leader in the jewelry industry in providing great selling products to our customers. How? By addressing the key areas listed above.

- We review literally thousands of items each month for the latest trends, prices and costs.
- All of our items are in stock and available for immediate delivery for customers around the world.
- We provide a secure, safe and private purchasing environment for our customers
- Our experts have been designing and manufacturing jewelry for many years.
- Our web sites are easy to navigate, make purchases and select your preferred payment method.
- All of our items are backed with an Absolute Satisfaction policy. Items can be returned for any reason with 30 days for retail purchases and up to 90 days for wholesale customers.

Robert Frechette is Founder and CEO of Gilbert & Frech, a leading direct source of jewelry, gemstones, beads and supplies for more than 8 years. You can view wholesale items at http://www.TraderLou.com or view http://www.gilbertandfrech.com for retail listings that are nicely packaged. He can be reached at robert@gilbertandfrech.com or (919) 434-1644 for any questions and comments.

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How to Choose a Pearl Jewelry Wholesaler

Posted on 24. Oct, 2009 by in Jewelry Business Tips

If you want to be wildly successful in your jewelry trading business, then you certainly need to know how to assess and choose the right jewelry wholesalers to work with. For sure, you want to work with wholesalers as they can provide you with bulk discounts. But there are so many jewelry wholesalers around, so how do you tell who are the better ones to work with?

There are three factors that you should be looking out for when assessing a jewelry wholesaler. The first factor you should pay attention to, is whether the wholesaler has a wide selection of jewelry for you to choose from. We are using pearl jewelry as an example in this article, so let’s just stick to this example. So assuming that you are looking to buy pearl jewelry, what you want is variety. This is important because with variety, you can now cater to a more diverse customer base. You can order fresh water pearl necklaces, jewelry for different occasions such as fall, winter, etc., cultured pearls jewelry and so on. Sometimes, you really need a wide selection of pearl jewelry just so you can get a good feel of what your customers want. You may start by ordering a few of each, and the discounts will probably be substantial, and then try selling them. After some time, you will know which gems are selling, and which are not. So you can now simply order more of those who sell well and make more money. As you can see, it’s definitely in your best interests if your wholesaler has a wide variety of pearl jewelry for you to choose from.

The second factor is support. In this day and age, it’s very likely that you may be dealing with a supplier who is halfway across the planet. For instance, if you reside in the United States or the United Kingdom, you could be getting your supplies from someone in China. With the rise of e-commerce, you would also be mostly likely to place orders from online stores. So support will come in the form of emails or live chats. Try corresponding with your suppliers by sending some emails or using their live chat (if available), and if you have the time, try calling them up. It would certainly be easier to detect something wrong when you are talking to someone over the phone. Once a certain level of trust is established, you can stick with emails and live chats. Wholesalers should always be responding to your emails in a timely manner. If they’re live chats are unmanned most of the time, it means their support systems are definitely not set up well, and that, for sure, is not a good sign. If they can’t handle live chat support requests, they shouldn’t even be there in the first place. Paying attention to these details will most certainly help you to avoid future problems.

Finally, you want to work with wholesalers who are able to provide you with unbeatable pricing. Generally speaking, a wholesaler in China will be able to give much lower prices compared to a wholesaler in a developed country, largely due to lower labor costs. These are market forces at work, and you want to be on the right side to benefit from the low pricing.

The above tips will most certainly help your jewelry business to become more profitable. So learn from them, and contact a pearl wholesaler today to start putting them into practice.

Qifu Pearl Processing Co.,Ltd. combines the design with processing, domestic wholesale pearls and export of Akoya pearl cultivation, Akoya , South Sea Pearl freshwater pearl and pearl jewelry series of products. It is one of the earliest established and most competitive enterprises in domestic pearl process industry with over 20 years.

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How To Source The Best Wholesale Jewelry

Posted on 24. Jul, 2009 by in Buying Jewelry

In the field of Jewelry Making Business, your plan of making and selling your jewelry items are not enough if you’re aiming to have a good profit. There are conditions and several ways on how to increase your profit while your business is running and competing with others. To help you increase your profit, you need to haunt for the best jewelry wholesalers that willing to open a business opportunity for you. However, haunting for the best is such an elusive task for you, so here are some helpful tips for you to start.

First, you have to find a costume jewelry supplier that purchasing jewelries worldwide, this is because almost all fashion jewelry are now imported. If your supplier has many sources, you’ll be able to have more choices of jewelry pieces to sell for a bargain price. Plus, your business is running on a steady stream of latest pieces and there is no hindrance for you to purchase wholesale jewelry because of world events that has negative impact to those wholesalers that only have one supply chain. One of the most common and popular places to source materials is eBay, if you are searching for beads for instance, use eBay to find cheap beads or any other supplies.

Second, choose a supplier that has a good eye on spotting latest trend of jewelry pieces. A good supplier of wholesale jewelry is willing to do the work in finding what’s hot and what’s not for you. They always offer latest trends about jewelries. Of course, you don’t want to be always at the bottom when it comes to latest trend designs of jewelry, remember that jewelry is your business, a major source of your income.

However, don’t forget the classic jewelries, although latest trend of jewelry pieces are taking its highest place in this field of business, yet a good wholesalers can also carry the classic ones, like sterling silver, Swarovski crystal, cubic zirconium, and semi-precious stone jewelry. Just see to it that your business doesn’t specialize with fashion forward jewelry only.

Third, choose wholesale supplier that carry wide variety of jewelry items. This supplier can offer different jewelry accessories from handmade glass beads, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, to anklets and toe rings and other body jewelries. They can also offer other accessories like cell phone jewelry accessories, hair accessories, bejeweled belts, bags, shoes, and key chain charms.

Fourth, look for a wholesale supplier that gives reasonable minimum charges as well as customer satisfaction. You don’t want to invest big amount of dollars just for a minimum charge for your every purchase. Online wholesale jewelry store is a good supplier to start; they may only have a fifty-dollar minimum order.

Never stick to those suppliers that don’t have stocked merchandise, and forcing you to wait until their jewelry import is ready.

Lastly, find a wholesale supplier that supplies you not only their merchandise but also their commitment and customer satisfaction. Listen to those people that commenting your supplier, and consider their advise.

Once you manage to find a steady, reliable supply of materials jewelry making becomes a profitable hobby very quickly. It is just a matter of sourcing cheap materials to ensure that you can make a decent markup.

If you would prefer you can watch this article in video format:

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