Selling jewellery, how to...........?

[Cate Salter]

Kit and Caboodle is not a e-commerce site, yet selling jewellery is what sustains us, so lets talk about it.

Every day I walk out of my house and see streets full of people adorned in ugly jewellery and malls crowded with gold shops. Where is the beautiful jewellery that we all make - hidden away in quiet white spaces.

So as a jewellery student, I often wonder whether it was a financially wise decision to invest so much time in learning the difficult skills of jewellery making, not to mention the personal emotions that I have had to tap into to create jewellery.

I have spent a bit of time this year looking at the options immediately available to make an income. What are they, and how viable are they? Are the same approaches possible for one-off pieces or do I need a production line? Should I manufacture myself, here in Australia, or send it offshore? None of this I am sure about, and perhaps a little more study, a little discussion would help clarify it for me and other jewellers, especially those recently graduated. It is the information about the choices that I wish to share firstly, and most of this I have found over the past few months and put in the links section of my starting blog - www.kitandcaboodle.com.au

I know that I am still experimenting with jewellery, not sure exactly where that will end, but would like to make an income and move those experiments on, I am not really ready for a definitive label or style, or ready for gallery representation.

So I have found that there are quite a few options to set up a online shop within a safe framework - Etsy, Handmademarket, HauteCouture - sign up, set up a shop, load up items and go from there. Lots of emerging designers have started here, especially Etsy and there is a nice local community thing happening there too.

That leads into the designer markets - Made on the Left, Finders Keepers, pyd, Young Blood, Rose St Markets. Summer time is market time!

There are some fabulous online shops looking for designers - Oye Modern, modamuse, Definite Style, moose. I love them all.

Anyhow, I am a little tired, and its been a busy week, just wondering...............
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Cathy S

[Monica Milla]

This is so true, I agree with every part of it. Thanks Cathy.

[Danielle Butters]

I think you’re bang on Zo, one part of it is definitely education. The other really crucial part of the equation, that in my experience often gets missed, is our responsibility as artists to value ourselves and our work more highly.

What I constantly see are artists and jewellers undervaluing their work and consequently underpricing and underselling. Our formal educations, while valuable, have trained us to see ourselves as 'only students', or 'emerging' until we've been at this game for some unspecified period of time, when we suddenly, somehow become 'established'. When we have this lack of confidence in ourselves, it's no wonder we struggle to find opportunities, market ourselves effectively and make money out of what we love to do.

I question this paradigm because, as has been proven by countless people in countless industries, value is all about perception. What we need to do is be able to influence the perception of our potential customers.

It may sound counter intuitive, but I’ve found that the first step in doing that is not to get out there and try to get top dollar for my work, while feeling inside that it’s not really worth that much, it is to look inside myself and value what I do more highly. When I do that, I provide enormous value in my work and won't accept anything less than I, and my work are worth, and my customers, perceiving this, happily accept my valuation.

That's been my experience. Keen to hear what others have found…

Danielle

[debra fallowfield]

I love your comment about 'ugly" jewellery...
I won't blab on ,but I mention it quite often on my website blog..

www.contemporaryjeweller.co.nz
www.contemporaryjeweller.co.nz/blog


I work weekends at an Art Market-and whilst I have day's I'll sell a $3,000 piece,there are the day's all I see is overweight women in capri's,wearing dull,mass produced PANDORA crap,and carrying Guess Vinyl handbags.
I know it sounds "snobby' but it's so true!
On those day's when presented with the comment"Christ,why is it so bloody expensive?'(In a whiney drawl),I take a deep breath,breath and calmly explain myself-without bitterness or irritation..I say "feel it" .
I then watch their faces change..
And if I've managed to educate one single person that day -then I've done a good job!!!