The jewelry industry is extremely competitive. Many upcoming and established businesses are competing fiercely in the market, each of them armed with its marketing tools. If you are an entrepreneur looking to get into this business, you too must offer something special for the customers. Consider the following time-tested tips as you start your business.
Define Your Line
Before you dive into the nitty-gritty of making your jewelry and looking for customers, you should get clear about the focus of your jewelry business. The standard way of doing this is through drafting a business plan.
A business plan gives an entrepreneur a clear game plan of how they will tackle their business and achieve their goals in the shortest time possible. It has to address the following questions:
- What type of jewelry will you be selling – fine jewelry or trendy pieces?
- Is your jewelry handmade or outsourced?
- Will you be operating the business from home, or do you need dedicated office space?
- Do you need a partner(s) or staff?
- What is your pricing strategy?
- What is your unique selling point?
- Do you have a target audience, and who are they?
- How much starting capital do you need?
There are many other questions, but the ones listed above should set you on the correct course.
Come up With a Business Budget
As you draft your business plan, you should also be looking into your budget. The most important thing you will want to address is your starting costs. This includes tools, equipment, marketing funds, permits, registration fees, space, and wages, if any. Once you have added everything and found out how much you need, take stock of how much you currently have. This will tell you how much additional funding you need to gather to launch your new business. If you need more guidance, there are many business budget templates that you can use online.
Register Your Business
Once you have reserved your business name, decide on the legal entity and proceed with your registration. If you don’t have partners, the most straightforward model to take is the sole proprietorship. It has minimum registration requirements; therefore, you can start your operations sooner. However, please note that a sole proprietorship won’t protect you if you run into any legal business issues. The next best company to register is the Limited Liability Company. With an LLC, your personal assets will be safe from legal issues associated with your business.
Find Funding
Starting a business requires money, and you probably know that getting business loans is not a walk in the park, especially if you have no credit history. In such instances, most of the funding will have to come from your savings. You can also take a loan from your family or friends. Nowadays, another option you can take is crowdfunding. This is whereby generous strangers donate tiny amounts of money towards your business.
Find Suppliers and Make Your Jewelry
It goes without saying that as an entrepreneur in the jewelry business, you need jewelry to operate. As you complete all the other steps, you should start focusing on gathering the actual merchandise required to start selling.
If you haven’t already, this would be time to start buying jewelry-making tools and machinery. Many jewelers incorporate CNC machining techniques into their work nowadays, so you might want to get a few of them. For instance, some jewelers use a CNC engraving machine to personalize wedding rings, while others use CNC lathes to carve detailed designs into metal pieces.
The popularity of these machines has seen a growth in the global CNC machine tools market size, which stood at $82.5 billion in 2018. There are many advantages to using these machines, some of them being increased efficiency and decreased risk of errors.
There is a lot that needs to be done when starting a jewelry business, and hopefully, the tips in this piece will be helpful. However, you should note that the work doesn’t stop once you’ve launched your new business. It’s just the beginning.
