I wish someone have told me

Jewelry Discussion
21

Jennifer

It's interesting, people on the "outside" tell me that I'm wasting
my time working in an office and that I should just follow my
passion and talent and DO IT! But then I listen to people on the
"inside" who talk about what a hard living it is... If any of you
on the "inside" have some good positive (and still realistic)
advice, I would really appreciate hearing it!

I’m 62, started in my fathers shop when I was 10, started my own
trade shop at age 25, stopped trade work and did only retail after a
few years, sold the store to an employee in 2000. Mostly shop work.
last year I owned the store, 1999, we did $1.8 million, 3/4 came from
the shop. Now I help jewelers.

Its harder today than when I started. More competitors on the same
street than in 1974.

And know your competition is anyone with a web site, so you have to
have one as well, a must.

I’ll give it to you straight.

To make a living in this you have to be able to do one of 2 things:

Sell higher priced stuff on an on going basis or sell a heck of a
lot of lower priced stuff and more often.

You need sales figures high enough to pay for all material, all
overhead, your salary, plus if you have employees plus extra to have
some extra $$ in reserve. The pay for you really should be enough to
say “I can’t easily get paid this much someplace else.”

Working 60 hours a week for $35,000 a year gets to be a drab after a
few years. Unless you work less hours and you don’t NEED the money
because your spouse brings home most of the bacon.

People say “do your passion!” gets old when your passion starts to
turn to wanting to buy things other than rolling mills and 2/0 saw
blades.

So to do well as a jeweler, besides business skills (could write
pages on that) you need to be able to make most things you see in
most nice jewelry stores. Like Jared/Tiffany/or other nice jewelry
store.

If you can’t do that, make or repair them, you’ll starve.

I’m not saying you have to make THAT STUFF, just you have to have
the skill to make that stuff.

Now if you’re not that skilled, you can make fun fashion things that
do NOT sell for a lot of money (as many crafts people make) that’s
OK. but now you have to sell A LOT OF THEM! You can have lower skills
and not make Tiffany/Jared or other jewelers stuff and do well but it
will either have to

  1. Sell for a lot of dough, or
  2. Sell lots of them.

Its just the facts.

Before opening my own place I worked for a designer who took the
opposite approach of " Until you make a name, you can only get so
much for your labor".

In the 70’s free form was popular. He’d take a aluminum pan, 1/2
filled with water. Place in his freezer and before ALL of it froze,
open and broke the air pockets so when it refroze it was like a
mountain range.

He’d get carving wax, melted it and poured it lightly over the ice.
Install Harden. The wax had cool ripples. He sawed the wax into
slabs, heated, bent around mandrels and made freeform rings,
pendants, etc.

took not much talent I promised you. he couldn’t set, hired me and
others to set. But he could SELL. Tall guy, beard, hawaian shirts,
heavy chains, deep voice. Striking guy.

From day one he charged up the you know what.

Charged good money before the reputatio camen. Made money until the
day he died.

So lets work backwards. big picture. Some people here posted " Until
you make a name, you can only get so much for your labor". I hate
that. It could be true but the bad part is you’ll ALWAYS charge
less/too little. They’ll never be a day you’ll say “Damn, I’m worth
twice that, starting Monday all of my labor prices will double.”

Admittedly many have bought my book and done that but its not at all
typical.

  1. You’d like to be paid $50,000 a year.

  2. Rent, overhead for a shop/store might be $80,000 a year.

  3. 1 employee $35,000

  4. taxes on wages $20,000

  5. That’s $185,000 in costs to cover.

  6. Lets talk income. There’s 2 types: a) selling jewelry ; b)
    repairs

  7. lets figure repairs brings in $100 an hour and HONESTLY doing
    repairs, with your schedule, you can do 20 hours a week in repairs.
    The rest of the week is doing custom, making product, selling, etc.

  8. So 20 hours a week=1000 hours doing repairs a year @ $100 per
    hour retail = $100,000 in come. Great!

  9. so you have brought in $100,000 to help pay for the $185,000 in
    total expesnes. So we need $85,000 in more money to pay the rest. But
    $85,000 will come from PROFITS, so you need, at keystone, to sell
    twice that.

  10. So you’ll also have to sell 2 x $85,000 or $170,000 of product
    (your cost is $85,000 and that’s paid for by the pruduct sale
    itself.)

  11. So your income will be a. $100,000 in repairs b. $170,000 in
    product sales c. TOTAL SALES = $270,000

$270,000 if my other numbrs are accurate (and I just made them up)
will pay all bills, you $50,000, the 1 employee, taxes and no money
left over in the biz check book.

Now we have the magic number, $270,000

Divide the $270,000 into weeks (forget xmas is more, just ride with
me here).

You’ll have to do $5200 a week in sales, week in, week out or $1038
every day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s ON THE AVERAGE
bringing in $130 an hour 8 hours a day.

So, in making jewelry that would be in a regular jewelry store or
sold on a web site, the question is CAN YOU DO THAT?

or in making silver jewelry with lapis cabs, CAN YOU?

That’s how you have to look at it.

If you can’t, you’ll pay yourself less money because you’ll have to.

You’ll also hirer lower wage people, because you have to. And you’ll
complain that you can’t get good help, because at that wage, you
can’t.

You’ll work longer hours, because you’ll have to

or

You’ll just take less (less pay, less hours) and have the spouse
foot the bill.

then it will get to the point where the household will loan the
store/shop money, because it has to.

or

You won’t take hardly any money out, which is the same as loaning
the store money because at home you cost money, just like the
children.

So you have to decide up front how you’ll make it.

My advice, if you love this, you must get trained so you can make or
repair the stuff that’s in a REAL jewelry store. Learn wax carving,
casting, maybe cad/cam, for sure ALL TYPES of stone setting, repair
on real jewelry.

Learn busienss, accounting and such? Sure. if you start stocking
inventory you have to have a REAL jewelry inventory point of sale
program, like The Edge or Jewelry Shopkeeper. Why? because inventory
over a year old is a bad as your household loaning the biz $$$.

Took me a long time to get past being a dumb kid sitting at a bench
I owned. I wish I had received this email I’m sending to you when I
was 26.

Start out well trained, good attitude. You must charge correctly for
your labor from the git go or YOU NEVER WILL. Don’t let anyone tell
you different.

On selling product, you CAN sell for lower margins if you sell more
often, have higher turn.

Good Luck

David Geller
www.JewelerProfit.com

22

I wish someone had told me that when I make the third mistake of the
day I should stop working in the studio around torches, kilns, acids
and sharp tools and do something else. It usually means my mind
isn’t in the game and I need to go do some nice paperwork, sketching,
house painting, lawn mowing…

Anything other than stay where the next mistake could cause
permanent damage.

Karen

23

David, I’ve been hanging around Orchid for years. I have been at the
bench for over 35 years… My hat off to you sir. Better advice and
truer words have never been written !

We should all tip our hat to you and say THANK YOU!

Dan.

24

Hey Charles,

Yes the rolling mill is the foundation for your future in precious
metalsmithing. The mill gives you the ability to melt metals into a
slug and then form them into any stock format for further
fabricating.

As a repairer and fabricator I have at least 30 precious alloys to
play with in the various carat values and colours. It will be
impossible to maintain unless you are able to melt your own alloys
and then mill them into any format as needed.

Cheers, Alastair

25

Jennifer

Reading David Geller’s response he is right. I don’t have the
overhead of a storefront or employee but I know many ‘jewelry artist’
that do not do repairs and they are hurting especially right now.

Almost exactly 50% of my business is repairs and restyling ‘Grandmas
Old Wedding Band.’ I repair for a couple of different stores and that
is my bread and butter. The creative pieces are icing on the cake.

The two jewelery artist that live near me refuse to do repairs and
they are both very skilled…I don’t understand that. You also cannot
replace education…priceless, just like good tools. I never took a
jewelers ‘course’ but I take every class I can get my hands on
without traveling to timbucktoo and shamelessly ask any questions and
I am willing to try anything.:wink:

joy
www.joykruse.com

26 
It's interesting, people on the "outside" tell me that I'm wasting
my time working in an office and that I should just follow my
passion and talent and DO IT! But then I listen to people on the
"inside" who talk about what a hard living it is... If any of you
on the "inside" have some good positive (and still realistic)
advice, I would really appreciate hearing it!

When I was young I had a work/study job as an apprentice at a
repertory theatre. The actors there all agreed that one should not
try to be an actor unless there was absolutely nothing else that one
could be content doing. I had begun making jewelry at the time, and
one actor asked me, “Why do you want to be in theatre when you can
do THIS?” The next semester, I changed my major from theatre to art.

M’lou

27 
You'll have to do $5200 a week in sales, week in, week out or
$1038 every day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. That's ON THE
AVERAGE bringing in $130 an hour 8 hours a day

That’s good advice. Don’t forget to include savings for retirement,
too.

If you’re planning on opening a store and making the sales in it,
you need to determine whether your geographic area can support your
business.

For example, if your price point for a piece will be $500, how many
people in your area ever buy a $500 piece of jewelry? How many do it
every year? If your local population base isn’t large enough, are
there enough tourists coming thru? How seasonal are the tourists?
Will it be a boom and bust process when the tourists leave town? Will
you have enough cash to stay in business and pay the bills until the
tourists return? Because if you don’t, you’ll go broke or in debt.

Do the people in your area (or the tourists who visit) fit the kind
of people who would buy your jewelry? If you want to do avant-garde
work in an area that thinks colonial furniture is the height of
modern fashion, you won’t find many local buyers.

If the area is large enough to support your potential business, it
might be large enough for people never to find you. How will they
know about your business? Who is your competition? Why would someone
buy from you instead of them?

Hope that helps.

28 
determine whether your geographic area can support your business.

I’m just going to drive the point home, because it’s SO important.
There are many here on Orchid who say it one way or another - more
importantly, I know and meet way more people than that in real life
with the same sort of take: “But I’m an ARTIST - I want to be pure, I
won’t to make my ART”. Sure,fine - that’s good - we’re all artists,
we just don’t need the title, maybe. I mean that - fine, good, be an
artist.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to eat, to pay rent, to have a
car and maybe some kids and a big screen TV, and to be successful at
all of the above you need to think very carefully about all of the
good advice that’s been presented on this thread. “I like to make $10
copper earrings but how many do I really need to sell to have a
viable living?” Maybe it’s time to farm it out to a pressroom and
open up dialogues with catalog sellers or something along those
lines. The notion that someone must grind away in the second bedroom
and scrape along at poverty level to be “An Artist” is quite naive
and completely limiting…

We went to the 2nd to the last day of a Pixar show at the Oakland
Museum yesterday. Several hundred pieces of astonishing talent,
ability and diversity. Really amazing, and all of those people get
paid a nice, tidy living to boot. Wake up, smell the coffee and do
the arithmetic.

29

My two cents…

When I was growing up, I would cruise by the jewelry stores, and I
was pester the jewelers with questions. My parents tolerated my
behavior, but they would not tolerate me even consider my taking up
jewelry as a profession.

They made it pretty clear that Nice Jewish Boys grew up to become
either doctors or lawyers, and they were going out on a limb allowing
me study engineering.

Now engineering has gone bust, I’m disabled and not earning any kind
of income, and now the only thing left to do with my days is to teach
myself how to make jewelry.

Full Circle.

Andrew Jonathan Fine

30

I wish someone had told me when to say “No.”

Jo Haemer
www.timothywgreen.com

31

First of all, thank you David Geller for your valuable
Your email is a keeper! I totally understand the points that you are
making - be sure to have good training and bench skills; have a
business strategy and follow it; and know how to sell, sell, sell!

Joy - you bring up a very good point about repairs. I have had a
little bit of training on how to handle repairs and my impression is
that it is a whole different animal that can be profitable, but if
you don’t really know your stuff, you can get into trouble. I guess
that goes back to David’s point that you should have good training
and skills. As a studio jeweler, is it worth it to do repairs or
could your time be better spent working on what you are really good
at (i.e. making your jewelry)? If you have a store front, then I
believe the answer is yes it is worth it, but as a studio jeweler??

Thanks to everyone for your great feedback,
Jennifer

32

Jennifer,

Everyone would like to be a “studio jeweler” and just make and sell
their own designs. The reality, often, is that you will need, at some
point, to service your customer’s jewelry needs, like sizing a ring,
soldering on a head, soldering a broken bracelet, etc.

Actually, I think these simple repairs are an excellent lead-in to
some very profitable custom work.

Many people are reluctant to trust strangers, and especially
jewelers, with their money or jewelry. If you can do a high quality
repair of someone’s jewelry, in a reasonable time frame, and for a
decent price, you may have a customer for life! Gaining trust is what
it’s all about.

It’s great to sell a custom ring you’ve made, for example, but what
if it doesn’t fit the customer? Unless you are willing to remake the
ring in a different size, you’ll most likely need to know how to go
about sizing it. Making your ring larger or smaller in the future
should be something to consider in the design of that ring, as well.
Do you really want to have to tell that customer that you’ll have to
send out the ring you’ve made to be sized by another jeweler?

Jay Whaley

33

Hi Jennifer,

Yes you must know your work when working in the repair field. One
thing you can count on is be sure to expect the unexpected. If you
are not prepared to deal with the “bomb” you are working on I would
stay suited to your Studio jewelry work.

There is money in repair as I had a trade shop for 10 years and did
27 retail jewelry stores work. Believe me I have run into just about
everything. Your strategy of how to work on a piece and then have
the know how to do it is paramount.

I have charged my own prices which have reflected geographic
differences which David Geller will not believe or attend to. We have
been at odds about that for a long time. Pricing is one thing,
knowing what to do and when to do it is another.

If you are not truly trained to be an excellent bench
goldsmith/jeweler I would pass on the repairs, especially if you
don’t think you can fix your mistakes.

Kind regards,
Russ Hyder
The Jewelry CAD Institute.

34

Jennifer

I have had a little bit of training on how to handle repairs and my
impression is that it is a whole different animal that can be
profitable, but if you don't really know your stuff, you can get
into trouble. I guess that goes back to David's point that you
should have good training and skills. As a studio jeweler, is it
worth it to do repairs or could your time be better spent working
on what you are really good at (i.e. making your jewelry)? If you
have a store front, then I believe the answer is yes it is worth
it, but as a studio jeweler

Jennifer, I say no.

Jewelry repair skills gets little credit… considered grunt work,
which it is, but you must have the skill level to fix anything that
goes wrong during even a “simple” repair. And it will. Often times
shoddy previous repairs or workmanship lurk unnoticed. Even if you
do spot them as a potential problem, the customer doesn’t understand;
that’s your problem, they just want it fixed. Like the dreaded
“Mothers Ring” 10k, paper thin, loaded with stones that won’t take
any heat. While doing a “simple” weld, you accidentally hold the
heat a microsecond too long and OOPs the undergallery disappears in
one area. Now, do you have the skill level to rebuild those tiny
gallery wires? Do you have the stock wire to do it, or will you now
have to stop your work and manufacture the wire or uses a higher
carat. Unless you have a laser welder which you won’t or you wouldn’t
be asking this question, you are going to spend the rest of the day
“fixing” the damage for the same $20 you quoted the customer, using
your own gold and lots of solder and LOTS of time. In a a store
front, you do repair work all day and some you make a great profit on
and some you lose, but in the end you come out ahead. Did you come
out ahead on that Mothers ring? (i have on one my bench…for almost
year now, from a friend. I can’t MAKE myself do it.)

I did jewelry repair in Jewelry stores for 19 years, (11 in one store
so they must have been happy with me…) In that case, someone else
ate it when things went bad, and made a decent profit when it went
smoothly. One of the first lessons I learned on the job ( I was the
only jeweler on site) was if it was Very much out of my skill
level…send it out to someone highly skilled. Everyone wins in the
end, unless you’ve priced it wrong in the first place. So to sum up,
kindly say no and recommend someone good, get back to your bench and
get on with your real work. You will live to create longer with out
the stress.

April Bower

35 
but as a studio jeweler??

As I see it, and have seen it for at least a week or two, there’s
one thing that’s crucial to booking high dollar repairs. You need to
do the old face to face. Example, I worked in a place that stuck me
in the back room (on top of a 20lb propane tank, sheeez) with zero
customer contact, it was the salesperson who sold the jobs. Typical
repairs were the elsewhere mentioned grunt work. Jobs were low buck
and so was my pay. I also worked in a place that allowed me full
customer contact and it was I who sold the more expensive jobs. By
the time I left I had nearly tripled their service volume.

Why do I specify ‘high dollar’ repair? That’s where the money is,
funny enough. The kind of client who’s willing to drop say, $1500 on
a repair wants and needs to feel they’re making a sound decision.
Geller’s ‘trust’ aspect totally dead on. But trust isn’t just feeling
secure that you won’t switch diamonds, its also about feeling secure
with the entire process. The predictability of the results. Its hard
to get that from a salesperson who responds to a question with, “I
dunno, lemmee me talk to the jeweler and I’ll call you next week.”

I should mention that I do the grunt stuff too. I don’t do it
because I enjoy it, I do it because it builds traffic. Many of my
best clients started out with a basic repair. Every retailer needs
traffic, by whatever means. That’s why you might see some ‘buy and
sell’ stores resort to rather undignified promos from time to time.
The store is short on traffic. So the promo costs them money and
maybe it works maybe it doesn’t. Repair, in the full range, is
dignified, effective and a profit center by itself, producing on a
daily basis. Instead of shelling out ad bucks to get people in the
door…you get paid to attract an even better category of
shopper…the one looking for a jewelry home.

So studio jewelers who are actually open to the public might fare
well to accept repairs. Those jewelers who are strictly online or
thru galleries only might have a harder time with it. But maybe they
could take trade work. I hate trade work myself but a buck’s a buck
especially if you’re short on bucks.

36 
I hate trade work myself but a buck's a buck especially if you're
short on bucks. I also worked in a place that allowed me full
customer contact and it was I who sold the more expensive jobs. By
the time I left I had nearly tripled their service volume.

Precisely. Neil nails it hammer down- I do any repairs but I charge a
hefty fee, because when the repair is done, it is done well. As Mr.
Geller also notes, repairs are based on trust, not so much on price.
So a repair, well done, earns me porridge on the table. And the
customer talks good and that is always good. And lastly, a person
that can do repairs WELL is a very valuable employee. Big street cred
there…

http://www.meevis.com
http://hansmeevis.blogspot.com