How to Start a Jewelry Business from Scratch

Like any business, a jewelry business in its earliest stages poses many obstacles for entrepreneurs. Luckily, given that we live in the age of technology and information, starting a jewelry business has never been easier.

However, there are many key steps to consider prior to starting your own jewelry business. If you’re wondering how to start a jewelry business, it ultimately comes down to some key steps.

So, get excited! It’s not every day you start your own business!

Let’s dive right in.

Develop a Business Strategy

Crafting a business strategy is integral to success.

The jewelry market is considerably crowded, so it’s important to develop a business strategy that guarantees success when planning how to start a jewelry business online.

Make a roadmap

A business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines and highlights exactly what your hopes are for your business and how to achieve your goals. Goal-setting is incredibly important if you want your business to not only succeed, but to thrive as well.

Your business plan or “roadmap” should also include a time-sensitive, actionable plan for reaching your goals in a step-by-step fashion. You’ll want to be sure to emphasize your vision for your jewelry business, while also determining the kind of jewelry you will sell, your target demographic/market, pricing/cost structure, and much more.

You can start by downloading a business plan outline online, to make the process easier.

Determine what makes you different

When thinking about how to start a jewelry business as a teenager, college student, or adult, you’ll want to determine what makes your brand different and emphasize it.

Understanding what makes your product stand out as opposed to others is the first crucial step toward determining your selling points. If you already have a collection of jewelry, or have rough drafts of what you’d like to make, scan it all over and examine it to see if any trends or patterns emerge.

Your own personal vision for your business, morals, ethics, or beliefs will also help paint a clear picture of what your business stands for. Determine what makes you unique, incorporate it, and make those things selling points!

Create Your Brand

After creating your business plan and determining what makes your brand unique, it’s time to bring your vision to life! Creating your brand is the most exciting part of starting your own jewelry business, so have some fun!

Choose a name for your business

It’s time to get creative!

How to start a jewelry business is as simple as choosing a name once you’ve made your business strategy. It’s also one of the most exciting parts of the process! The name of your jewelry business is most likely going to be the first thing that consumers and potential customers hear, so you’ll want to be sure that it’s not only catchy, but encompasses what makes your jewelry business unique.

You’ll also want to make sure that the name is easily distinguishable and memorable. You should consider choosing a name that relates to common industry terms so that your customers will know the kinds of materials and jewels you are selling and how they’re produced.

Ultimately, there is a lot of consideration involved when choosing the perfect name for your business.

Craft a logo for your business

You want your logo to speak volumes about your vision and the values of your brand. Creating an effective and memorable logo can help make a huge first impression on customers.

When designing your logo, remember to keep the distinctiveness of your brand and your target market at the forefront of your decisions. The best way to go about this is to make a list of everything that you want your logo to communicate about your jewelry business, plus the aesthetic requirements that you have in mind.

Build a Financial Model

Understanding and managing the finances of a business is essentially the business itself. You’ll want to estimate all of your costs and compare them to expected sales in order to determine if your business is realistic and can create a profit. Be sure to include overhead costs, costs of supplies, and potential sales in this process. In order to make this process easier and less daunting, determine your pricing and potential customers beforehand.

Determine pricing

Determining how much it costs to create or purchase your jewelry.

Do the math based on how much you will sell it for. This will determine whether or not your business is going to be profitable. Adding the price of materials, the time it took to produce the piece (based on hourly market rate), the cost of packaging, and accounting for taxes will help paint a clear picture of how to price your product to fetch a profit.

Determine potential customers

Last but not least, this is probably the easiest place to start when building a financial model for a jewelry business. By going to craft fairs, browsing social media, or reaching out to other merchants in the industry, one can better determine how they will entice consumers.

Doing your due diligence will allow you to figure out which audience you should be targeting, how to sell to them, and how to engage with them to create sales. Painting a clear picture of how you will sell your product is crucial when building a solid financial model.

Consider the Origins of Your Jewelry

If your jewelry is handmade, you may have been wondering how to start a handmade jewelry business.

If your jewelry is bought from manufacturers and is more high-end, you may have wondered how to start a gold jewelry business or how to start a diamond jewelry business.

Regardless, the steps to getting there are the same as mentioned in this article. However, depending on what kind of jewelry you’re selling, it should have an effect on your business/marketing strategy, what audiences you target, and how you build your financial model. Following the three aforementioned steps when starting a jewelry business is essentially all that matters.

However, the kind of jewelry you sell should have a major impact on what makes your business unique, and thus how you craft your brand!

Your Selling Channels

A vital step in developing your jewelry business will be determining where you will sell it. After all, the internet is a big place and there are numerous channels for businesses to get their products to consumers. One of the best ways to get right into selling can be to list your product on a third-party market, such as Amazon or Etsy.

Realistically, in the jewelry world, Etsy is likely the better platform option, especially if you make the product yourself. Etsy is known for handmade products, which means that you will be tapping into an audience already searching for that type of product. Even better, you can customize your shop and then advertise directly on the platform to get the word out.

The other alternative is to forego third-party platforms and build your own website to sell your jewelry. Platforms like Ecwid make this extremely easy and you can have your own site and store up in barely any time at all. The benefit to starting your own site is that you can avoid all of the additional fees that third-platforms take out of your sales. You will have to work a bit more at building up your traffic and audience since you won’t have a built-in audience like Etsy.

Develop Marketing Strategies

Once you have laid out primarily what your business will be and how it will operate, then comes your marketing strategy. In other words, how will you let people know about your brand and make your products known?

Marketing is a massive topic within itself and you can have numerous channels upon which you market your product. While we won’t discuss every single potential here, we will take a look at a few options that can be excellent choices.

Social Media

Social media marketing is one of the most effective strategies in the modern age. However, even social media marketing can be split up into a few different subcategories.

On one hande, you can advertise through social media platforms themselves, such as Facebook or Instagram ads. This can be a good way to reach those who may be browsing for jewelry ideas across those sites.

Create Content Around Your Product

On the other hand, you can also make content around your jewelry to create holistic marketing for yourself.

It can be effective to create videos centered around your jewelry pieces or show people wearing them and posting these on your social media channels for people to see.

If you’re lucky, one of these videos will even take off and go viral, which can drive a high amount of traffic to your business. However, it isn’t all about luck, as there are guidelines and tips you can find for improving video content to be more likely to go viral.

Influencer Marketing

Going even further in the social media marketing realm, you can engage in influencer marketing. This means partnering or contracting with influencers who already have a decent-sized following to promote your product.

Influencer marketing can be incredibly effective, as it piggybacks on the trust the influencer has built with their following. When their followers see them promoting a jewelry product, they will be more likely to assume that it is a quality and trustworthy product or business.

Search Engine Ads and SEO

If you are running your own website, one of the best advices is to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). What this simply means is improving the keywords, links, pages, etc across your website to make it more likely to show up on search engines.

Moreover, you can run ads across Google to further increase your likelihood to show up near the top of search results. This will help more people find your site, which in turn can lead to more sales.

Trade Shows and Local Fairs

If you want to add an in-person touch to selling your jewelry, you can also consider getting a booth at a trade show or local fair. This gives you a chance to reach people who may not have found you online or saw your product otherwise.

Trade shows and fairs can also be an excellent way to test the waters of your product’s performance in the brick-and-mortar realm. Even if you aren’t looking to sell in a store, shows and fairs can be an excellent way to connect with potential or current customers.

Multi-Channel Marketing is King

Remember, you don’t need to narrow yourself down into just one form of marketing. In fact, a multi-channel approach is often the best way to get the most return on your efforts.

Of course, when just starting out, you may not have a huge budget to invest in marketing efforts. This means you may have to start out with just one paid method and branch out later.

However, you can couple your paid marketing with self-propelled efforts like creating videos around your product.

Want to Start a Jewelry Business?

We hope the above helps you understand more about starting your jewelry business. Fortunately, Ecwid is here to help with one of the steps in getting your business off the ground: creating a website for your business.

Your website will serve as the public-facing display of your brand, so be sure it speaks to you! Be sure to include images of your work on your website, as well as contact information and details regarding how to purchase. Luckily, there is a simplified way to get the ball rolling prior to this step. With Ecwid, you can start your own jewelry business for free with the added benefits of having your product marketed for you, 24/7 customer service, a transaction method for purchases, and much more!

You can also check out the Ecwid Academy to learn everything you need to know about running a successful online store.

Get started for free now!

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