5 Cost Effective Tips for Starting a Jewelry Business
Are you planning to launch a jewelry business but don’t know where to start? From designing the pieces, finding manufacturers, setting up inventory, and deciding on pricing, to marketing your business and getting customers, it can all become too much.
Luckily, with a good plan, patience, and persistence, you can have a successful jewelry brand in no time. Whether you decide to sell your products in a physical store or online, the customer should get the same high-quality experience and product wherever they shop.
Ready to show the world your unique sparkle? Read on to discover the 5 essential steps to starting a successful jewelry business.
1. Choose an E-Commerce Platform
If you already have a physical store but want to sell jewelry online as well, you need an e-commerce platform that can support your vision and goals for the future. E-commerce platforms are ready-made websites specifically made for online shopping that you can launch in a single day. They come with pre-made templates, marketing and SEO tools, promotion and discount tools, content management systems, and payment/checkout tools.
Some of the most popular platforms include:
- Shopify
- BigCommerce
- Magento
- Big Cartel
- WooCommerce
- Prestashop
- Wix
- Squarespace
- 3dcart
They all come with different price points and features, so make sure you do proper research before choosing one. Consider offering as many different payment methods as you can for your customers.
Next, set up a ‘cart abandonment’ email series for customers who add products to the cart but never checkout. Offer them discount coupons, promo codes or other incentives to encourage them to complete the purchase. Finally, have a clear shipping, delivery, and refund policies to avoid issues with unhappy customers.
If the majority of your customers prefer online shopping, make sure their experience with your website is top-notch. To increase your authority and simplify the shopping process for your customers, you should invest in high-quality jewelry photography for your online store. Also, enable live chat on your site and hire customer support representatives to help customers with questions, orders, and complaints.
2. Find Your Product Niche
Jewelry is a large industry with fierce competition, so you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. One of the best ways to do that is to find a profitable product niche. For instance, do you want to sell formal, high-end jewelry to a narrow, but wealthy audience or do you want to serve a wider market by selling wholesale silver chains?
Make sure you have a clear vision of your jewelry business and consider the type of competition you’ll be dealing with. Specialize in a niche such as gold/silver jewelry, wedding jewelry, affordable jewellery, diamonds, costume jewelry, handmade jewelry, pearls, or body jewelry.
Narrowing down your niche will help you better research your competitors, know your buyer personas, and comb through potential manufacturers or suppliers. This way, you can target your customers more efficiently with marketing campaigns and see what works and what doesn’t.
3. Know Your Target Market
If you want a successful jewelry business, you need to know who your potential customers are. Based on the type of jewelry you’re selling, their income, location, and other demographics, it should be easy to figure out who you’re selling to. This is your buyer persona – an imaginary representation of your ideal real-life customer.
You can create 2-3 buyer personas at a time, each with its own characteristics. For example, if you sell engagement/wedding jewelry, bridal jewelry, and luxury jewelry, you’ll have a few different customer profiles. First, you have men looking to buy engagement rings, then you have brides looking for bridal pieces, and wealthy men/women looking to buy occasion pieces for formal events.
4. Create a Business + Marketing Plan
The next essential step to launching a jewelry business is creating a business and marketing plan. This is where you’ll lay the foundation of your business vision, goals, budgets, sales, KPIs, target markets, and types of products. You can make a quarterly plan to start with and see how it goes.
You can then tweak it, add or remove items, change budgets, and refer to it for help on big business decisions. Your business plan is the perfect place to write down new ideas such as deciding whether to buy wholesale jewelry to sell or design a unique collection and find manufacturers to make it.
In your marketing plan, aim to cover ad campaigns, including paid advertising on social media, influencers, TV/radio commercials, billboards, and other types of advertising. You should also set a budget for this and know the exact campaign starting and ending dates, along with the people responsible for them. Finally, your marketing plan is also a place for brainstorming, so write down new, unique ways of building brand awareness.
5. Perfect the Art of Selling
Now that you have an online store and some ad campaigns running, you may think it’s time to sit back, relax, and watch customers flock to your store. Though it’s true you can sell anything to anybody, getting people to buy from you can be harder than you expect in the beginning.
Like with every new business, it takes time for things to start taking off and for people to learn about your brand. If the market is saturated, you should also find your unique selling proposition and tell potential customers why you’re different from your competitors.
If your sales are low, it might be a great time to tweak your ad campaigns, organize giveaways on your social media channels, or work with influencers. Selling doesn’t happen only in-store or on your website. You as a business owner, your employees, your branding, customer service, and product packaging all have the power to sell.
Launching a Jewelry Business: What’s Next?
Launching a brand sparkling new jewelry business from scratch can be a challenging journey, but these tips will help you set everything up and get it up and running.
From knowing your niche and target market to choosing the right e-commerce platform, there are many moving parts to running a successful jewelry store.
Need more small business tips? Check out the rest of the articles on our website where we share the latest e-commerce news, trends, and small business tools for success.
