Jewelry can be eye-catching, understated, sentimental or bold. It’s also personal to the wearer, which makes selling jewelry an exciting way to earn a living.

Besides, the U.S. jewelry industry is valued at $71.3 billion. Starting your own jewelry business is a great way to get involved and make income from your passion.

But you may not know where to start. Are you looking for guidance on how to start a jewelry business? Read on to learn more.

Choose Your Marketplace

If you create a jewelry business plan, you’ll need to know several things. We’ll walk through those now.

Are you going to sell jewelry online or are you going to sell in a store? They both come with their own pros and cons.

Selling online saves you money on rent and utility bills for business premises. You probably won’t need staff either. Plus, you can sell to anyone in the world.

But you face stiff competition from other online jewelry businesses. You’ll really need to know what makes you different.

Opening your own store gives you less local competition. But you may have to charge higher prices to cover the cost of rent and bills.

Investigate both options and decide what’s right for you and your jewelry business goals.

Will You Sell Ready-Made or Handmade?

There are differences between selling your own jewelry that you’ve made and selling jewelry you’ve sourced. Let’s look at what you need to know for both options.

Selling Handmade

Are you going to make your own jewelry to sell? If so, have a trusted but honest friend tell you exactly how good your jewelry is.

If it’s not good enough yet, find out if there’s anything you need to learn how to do. Practice until it’s high quality and you can charge higher prices.

Spend time generating original designs. To be really successful, you don’t want to follow what everyone else is doing. Taking that path leaves you vulnerable when jewelry trends change.

Check out the marketplace and find out if anyone is doing what you do or want to do. If they are, figure out how can you make yours different. Can you apply the principles of one technique to something different to create something new

Selling Ready-Made

If you’d rather sell ready-made pieces, you need to source suppliers. Choosing one style might seem limiting but it makes it easier to target customers. You’ll become the “go to” store for that style.

You can use this “style” to help style your store. For an online store, choose fonts and colors that support the style. If you’re opening a physical store, choose furnishings and display units that do the same.

When you’re looking at suppliers, don’t choose them based on price. View here for a good example of how to sell high-end jewelry.

Don’t buy so much stock that you’re still selling last season’s styles. Switching up your stock helps guarantee return business.

Name Your Jewelry Business

Now you know what you’re going to sell and where, you can think of a name! Your name should reflect the style of jewelry and your target customer.

Use it to secure the domain name for your jewelry business website. Start generating word-of-mouth among your friends. Building a buzz about your business and what you sell will help you hit the ground running.

Enjoy Running Your Jewelry Business!

The key to having a successful jewelry business is enjoying what you do. Your passion for jewelry will shine through to your customers.

And it’ll make the process of keeping financial records and the day-to-day processes more bearable.

Passionate about jewelry? Check out my other jewelry articles for more tips, trends and guides.