1. Why do so many Jewellery Party businesses fail?
Looks at the 3 main reasons why new jewellery party businesses fail - it’s never the economy!

2. Get a 22% discount on your order.
How ignoring shipping costs can cost you serious money, and what to do about it.

3. Tips for buying wholesale jewellery on eBay.
Things to watch out for if you’re sourcing stock on eBay.

4. How to get the most from your jewellery displays.
A good display can mean the difference between success and failure, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

5. Sterling silver jewellery and the growing price of silver.
Why you might want to reconsider investing heavily in Sterling Silver jewellery.

6. Jewellery Retailers in the UK. Who are they?
Who are you really competing against as a jewellery retailer?

It’s the nature of the fashion industry that fashions change - they wouldn’t be called fashions otherwise. Our best selling lines of costume jewellery from a year ago are no longer our best sellers today. For this reason, we bring in new lines every time we update our stock.

But we rarely know in advance which of those new necklaces and bracelets will become popular. We can be fairly confident that they will all sell, as we have a good idea of the general direction fashion trends are moving in, but identifying those rare best sellers is close to impossible.

Our latest range went live about 6 weeks ago - time enough for some items to stand out from the crowd. The two styles below have proven to be very popular, with many of our regular customers buying them repeatedly or in large volume. They wouldn’t be buying so many if they weren’t selling well on the street. So if you’ve shied away from these or similar items because they look so new or different, it might be worth your while taking a closer look.

We were very surprised by just how popular these lines have become, and so quickly too. Our experience tells us that blue necklaces are slow sellers, but something seems to have changed. We’ll keep you posted.

We started out as retailers over 10 years ago. During that time, we sourced jewellery from just about every wholesaler and importer in the UK and Ireland. There were good suppliers and there were bad suppliers, but most fell somewhere in the middle - doing just enough to make us buy from them again, but not enough to make us recommend them to anyone else.

When we became wholesalers ourselves, we were determined not to make the same mistakes so many of our old suppliers made. We deliberately sought out fresh lines of stock from new manufacturers throughout the year, we never bought the same lines as the previous year (no matter how popular they were), and we put an extra effort into packaging and quality control that we knew would make us stand out from our competitors.

When you have a long list of orders to fill on a Monday morning, it’s tempting to quickly build the order by grabbing each item from its shelf, tossing it into a bag or a box, and then shipping it as is. This is what happens with most suppliers, and this is why so many items arrive damaged. Damages are part and parcel of the jewellery business, even more so for costume jewellery which tends to have many attached or movable parts.

When we pack orders, we check each item individually before shipping. We take it out of its original packaging, ensure that no clasps are broken and that all pieces are present, and then we repack the item using our own, more robust cards and bags. The picture below is of one of our current best selling necklaces as we receive it from the manufacturer. Yes, it’s packaged, but not well. It’s scrunched up so tightly that the possibility of damage in transit is very real. This is how most wholesalers ship their goods, and what we grew used to when we were retailers ourselves.

Here is the same item after we repack it. It’s given a sturdy card to protect it during transport and to allow the retailer to display or store it without risk.

While repacking, we examine the necklace for damage, and if found, we either fix the problem, or set it aside and write it off as damaged goods. We do our best never to send a damaged item to a customer. We’re not saying we’re perfect. Sometimes, no matter how good the quality control process or the packaging, something slips through the net. But the number of items returned to us by customers is very small, nothing like the volume we ourselves experienced as retailers years ago.

Below is a second example of how we repack our goods prior to shipping. The green necklace is a prime candidate for damage due to poor packaging, while the stringy necklace can easily lose it’s shape if not packed tightly.

This is what the same items look like when we ship them to our customers.

As retailers, you can’t realistically expect perfection from your suppliers. Sometimes things do get broken or damaged in transit or when packaged a little too tightly. But there are ways suppliers can minimise damages, and this is something you do have a right to expect.

Our newest selection of Costume Jewellery went live on the website last week, and it’s proving extremely popular. Regular customers have been waiting for this new stock for some time, and if last week’s orders are anything to go by, have not been disappointed. We did experience some delays during the manufacturing process which slowed delivery down by about a month, so apologies for that.

We have approximately 200 new lines, consisting of Fashion Necklaces and Charm Bracelets. As usual, all of these lines are new, in fresh designs and colours. The new range consists of four unique necklace designs similar to the one pictured above - all of which are proving to be the very popular. Our charm bracelets have also been augmented with a completely new set, as many of the older designs were selling out.

Yesterday we added about 70 new lines of Costume Jewellery to our catalogue. This includes a good selection of necklaces, many of which were similar in style to our more popular sold out items. As our catalogue is sorted with the newest items first, simply browse through the first 8 pages of Necklaces to see them all.

We’ve also added a small selection of new bracelets that we feel you’ll like. Again, these bracelets are in the same vein as our best sellers, and should retail very well.

In the past few weeks we’ve made a number of changes to the site that we’d like to tell you about.

As we are an Irish business, we’ve been charging all our European customers VAT at the Irish rate of 21.5%. From January of this year, we’re now also registered for VAT in the UK. This means that all non-VAT registered UK customers will now be charged the UK rate of 15%. Other European buyers will continue to be charged the Irish rate. As before, VAT registered customers in EU countries other than Ireland (including the UK), can deduct VAT prior to paying by entering their VAT number into the space provided on the checkout page.

The second change we’ve made is to increase the minimum order size to £60. We’re doing this because of the declining value of sterling, which has had a serious impact on our shipping costs to the UK. Rather than increase our prices or our shipping charges, we’ve decided to raise the minimum spend. As we subsidise all shipping, very small orders were simply not cost effective.

The final change that we’ve introduced in January is a range of PDF catalogues that can be downloaded directly from the website. These catalogues are updated every day directly from our database, and come in three versions: Sterling prices, Euro prices, and no prices. The catalogues without prices have been created specifically for you to show to your customers. It lists item numbers, descriptions, and pictures, all without any reference to Nirvana Wholesale or pricing information.

A word of warning about the PDF catalogues: As they are generated early each morning, it’s possible that an item may sell out during the day, so we are unable to guarantee an item in the catalogues will be in stock if you place an order later in the day.

The PDF catalogues can be downloaded here.

November is the busiest month for wholesalers, as their retail customers prepare for the Christmas period. It’s rare indeed that a successful retailer holds off on placing large orders until December. Last minute top-up orders are a different thing entirely.

Thanks to our arrangements with DHL, we are confident that our December delivery times will remain at 1-2 days across most of the UK and Ireland. However, as with all online companies, we do have a cut off point for Christmas orders. To ensure delivery early in Christmas weak, customers should ensure that any last minute orders are placed and paid for by Wednesday, 17th December. If you are paying by telephone rather than Paypal, you should place your order early in the day to allow enough time for us to call you the same day. Deliveries placed on Wednesday will be dispatched either the next day, or, more likely, on Friday morning.

In common with most wholesalers, we will be shutting down for our Christmas break from 19th December - 5th January. Orders can still be placed during this period, as the website will be running and fully up to date throughout, but these orders will not be processed or dispatched until January 5th.

We’d like to wish all our customers a happy and a very prosperous Christmas.

December is the busiest month of the year for retailers, and most of you will have sourced all of your Christmas stock before the month begins. But not everyone plans ahead, and in the current economic climate, many retailers may be holding off on placing large orders until they see how early sales go.

Back in the days when we used Royal mail for our deliveries, this might have been a problem, as they are notoriously slow over the Christmas period, making the delivery times of orders unpredictable. This year however, we do not foresee any such problems. We’ve been using DHL very successfully for many months now, and we expect December delivery times to be the same as previous months.

Over 90% of orders delivered to UK mainland addresses arrive the day after they are shipped, and we see this continuing over the coming busy weeks.

The Irish VAT rate will be rising by half a percent on the first of December, to 21.5%. This will affect all customers, apart from those in EU countries other than Ireland who are registered for VAT. VAT registered customers can still enter their VAT number on the checkout page to remove VAT prior to paying.

The VAT increase is outside our control, and will add approximately  £0.50 per £100 spent to the cost of each order.

We’ve had some downtime on the website over the past couple of days. This was for brief periods of 10-15 minutes only, but it can be distracting for customers, especially when they are in the middle of placing large orders for Christmas, or even worse, about to check out.

In order to keep our customers up to date when problems like this occur, we’ve started a Website Status Blog. This blog is completely separate from our website, so in the event that this site goes down, it will remain unaffected.

The purpose of the blog is to detail any downtime or site problems, and provide updates on when we expect them to be resolved. The blog also provides email and phone contact details, which would be unavailable if our main site were down.

Regular customers may wish to bookmark the new blog. Hopefully, there will be little or no reason to use it, but the reality is that no matter how good your technical operation, problems do occur, usually at the most inconvenient times.