Online jewelry sales are a bit slow these days, so I’m trying something new: placing bracelets for sale in a bricks-and-mortar shop. And that meant building up a bit of inventory.
Normally, I keep one of nearly everything. By doing so, I can shorten my processing time because I only need to resize the jewelry for the buyer, rather than making something completely new. To place pieces in a shop, however, I needed to create a handful of pieces, in several sizes each.
Over the last week, I made seven completely new bracelets:
Close-up images and details are below. From left to right, the individual pieces are as follows.
- 1 x Turkish Round at 7.5″
- 2 x Viperbasket at 7.0″ and 7.5″
- 2 x Byzantine with Gold Lovers’ Knots at 7.0″ and 7.5″
- 2 x JPL with Gold Accent at 7.0″ and 7.5″
Each piece takes around 3.5 to 5 hours to make, from making the rings to dropping the pieces into my tumbler for polishing. You can imagine how long it took to make the whole set!
I dropped off the pieces yesterday to Arts and Crafts, a consignment store at the local shopping mall that features a wide variety of handcrafted products. I signed the sales agreement, and had a good discussion with the owner about the jewelry styles, manufacturing process, and jewelry care and services.
When I browsed through the store previously, I noticed that most of the other items were at the lower end of pricing, somewhere in the $5 to $50 range, without any higher-priced jewelry selections. If (and that’s a big “if”) the pieces sell, the store will take 30% of the revenue.
I selected these pieces because they are at the lower price points, represent a variety of simple and sweet designs, and seemed like good test cases for selling at the store. If they sell, I may add a few of the more complex, higher-priced pieces. Maybe they will sell, maybe they won’t, but it seems worth trying for very little risk.
I’ll check in with the store in a few week and see if any pieces have sold. If so, I’ll replace them and (probably) add a new piece, as well.
Fingers Crossed!
Close Up and Details
Turkish Round
Sterling silver
7.5 inches
End rings welded
Viperbasket
Sterling silver
7.0 inches and 7.5 inches
Larger rings and end rings welded
Byzantine with Gold-fill Lovers’ Knots
Sterling silver and 14K gold fill
7.0 inches and 7.5 inches
End rings welded
JPL Chain with Gold Fill Byzantine Knot
Sterling silver and 14K gold fill
7.0 inches and 7.5 inches
End rings and rings around the center knot welded
