If you've been making jewelry for awhile and are looking for ways to grow as a business owner and jewelry designer, I'll outline some tips that I've learned that may be of benefit to you. First of all, it is important to realize that success does not just happen, it is the result of lots of hard work, planning, and creative thinking. So first thing I'd suggest is to come up with a business plan and do some brain-storming. Each jeweler has their own style- come up with something that reflects who you are, something unique, that can be a reflection of what you want to get across to the customer. Ask yourself these questions:
1. What is different about my product and how does it stand out from my competition?
2. How can I capitalize on those differences to make my product tell a story? A story about who I am, what my design style conveys, and the overall feel of my product line. For instance- Does your product have a whimsical theme, a nature inspired theme, a modern geometrical theme, a classical, contemporary, or organic theme? Do you use a lot of natural stones, silver, glass, pearls, etc... If you consistently have customers use the same words to describe your jewelry- that is the theme that is coming across.
3. Once you have come up with a thematic direction for your product- it is time to create branding.
I have a consistent dragonfly theme that I use in my business cards, earring cards, tags, website banner, and craft faire booth banner. I use a similar picture/logo on each which has my web address included (super important). I was able to put together the design of all of these with the help of an Etsy graphic artist: For Keeps . She did all of the design work for the business cards, earring cards, website banner, and booth vinyl banner, giving me a cohesive look. I then took the earring cards and had them printed at Vista Print (as business cards)- super cost effective. I had the business cards printed at Overnight Prints (they have a high end glossy uv coating which I love). I had Redhead Diva (another Etsy artist) print the stickers for my boxes. I printed the hang tags myself on my printer. The front of the hand tag also doubles as a logo/avatar. The website banner was easy to load onto my website and Etsy site. Lastly the vinyl banner was taken care of by For Keeps- she works with a company that does the printing and shipping of these. The vinyl banner is excellent quality- thick waterproof vinyl. It has heavy duty grommets, perfect for hanging. The tricky thing about something large like a vinyl banner is that it must be created in a scaled vector graphics format. You cannot take your website jpeg banner and send it off to be printed as a vinyl banner. It will not scale correctly and look horrible. A graphic that is created as a vectorized graphic (using Adobe Illustrator, etc..) could be printed on a business card or printed on the side of a bus and will look exactly the same. So, having said that, it is helpful to have someone create the graphic and send it off in the format that will work.
Once your created your branding, you'll find that you are much more memorable in the customers mind. Imagine you are a customer and have walked around a big craft fair looking at booths or browsed through a website, like Etsy, looking at jewelry. The more you see a business's name, the more your will remember that business. That is why a catchy business name, web presence, and branding are so important. Stay tuned for more about picking the right business name and creating a web presence in future Jewelry Business Tips installments.