Non-brand name jewellery like ours can be difficult to describe in words that people understand, especially when it does not contain any recognised parts such as CZs or sterling silver – hence the frequency of looser search terms such as “chunky jewellery.”

As a jewellery retailer, you should have nailed down your wholesaler or supplier by September / October. The Summer and Autumn months are the time to try out new wholesalers and identify which items sell well. Once you know this, you will be in a position to order real volumes of  strong selling lines in time for Christmas.

Ideally, you should be stocking 20 of each strong selling necklace or bracelet, and 5-10 of the less popular lines. December is no time to be trying out new styles or “seeing what sells.”

But if you haven’t done this, if you haven’t identified the strong sellers in months gone by or if you are buying from us for the first time in November, you should look to our best sellers page and buy from there. You really don’t have time to do anything else.

You should buy in volume from the top 6 items on this page, and to a lesser degree from the bottom 9 items – then come back a week later and check the page again.

And next year, remember to plan ahead and try out your jewellery wholesalers and their stock in the Summer months.

This is a difficult question to answer, as it very much depends on who your customers are, what their particular styles might be, and how deep their pockets are. But there are ways to get an insight into what you should be buying. Experienced and successful jewellery businesses will already have a good idea what sells well, what they should be buying from their wholesaler, and in what volume, but what if you’re just starting out or not doing so well?

We’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: watch our jewellery best sellers page. This page is updated in real time as orders are placed, and lists the top 15 best selling lines of necklaces and bracelets. It changes many times a day, but there is a general uniformity to what appears here.

Items that sell well tend to stay on or near the best sellers page until they have sold out, and similar looking items to the top sellers tend also to sell well.

As the page relies on actual orders to fill itself, you can be sure that the top sellers are being bought by many jewellery retailers across the UK, and that these retailers are coming back to buy the same items again and again.

If the items on our best sellers page look like jewellery you have never stocked before, if they look a little too expensive, or a little lacking in colour, then you need to look at your buying model. These items are what is selling on English and Scottish High Streets today. If you’re not stocking them, or items similar to them, then chances are you don’t know your customers as well as you think.

As with all new trends, most suppliers will be slow on the uptake. Just as it took many jewellery wholesalers an entire year to begin stocking tribal designs in 2010, we expect many of those same wholesalers will continue ordering the old tribal designs well into 2012 and beyond, even as its popularity wanes.

The next trend? You can’t ever know for sure what is going to take off, but we feel 2012 will see a big increase in popularity for bronze tinted necklaces, bracelets and rings. We stocked a few of these lines over the past few months, and they have proven to be very popular indeed, being bought by the same retailers who were quick to buy tribal designs in early 2010.

So keep an eye on this. We may be wrong about 2012, but we don’t think so. The tribal / metallic trend will expand into bronze jewellery, leaving strong colours on the back burner for another year or two.

Which is not to say they have none. Pick any other costume jewellery wholesaler, browse their catalogue, and there will be a section for Rings or Fashion Rings, but once you open up that section and start looking around, the range is dismal at best, and unsaleable at worst.

Many jewellery wholesalers insist that a retailer purchase a dozen of a particular ring in a particular colour, others only have three or four styles for you to choose from.

Which is very confusing to us, as we stock a wide range of wholesale fashion rings in our catalogue: 16 pages at last count, showing over 100 unique styles.

While it’s true that they do not have a high retail value, and as such have a low wholesale value, they are immensely popular and count themselves amongst our strongest sellers. The pictures below are just two examples of the fashion rings you can find in our catalogue – there are many more just as unusual, and just as popular.

The initial enquiry runs along the lines of “Will you sell to me?” or “What do I do to be allowed to buy from you?”

We get so many of these requests that our automated reply, built into our contact form, answers the question for us. Just place an order. We don’t vet potential customers beforehand or insist that they jump through hoops prior to placing that first order. Our sole requirement is that you have the funds available to pay for the stock you are ordering.

This alone is usually sufficient to deter the time wasters and the armchair business people who are all talk and no action. You’ll find that most jewellery wholesalers take a similar approach to new customers.

On top of this,  I would recommend that anyone thinking of getting started in the jewellery businesses take a look at our free eBook: Starting a Successful Jewellery Business. The sections dealing with what sort of stock to buy are particularly important, as this is one area that new and established jewellery businesses often get wrong.

But the days of jewellery retailers travelling to Manchester to stock up are long past. Walking through the showrooms of the Manchester wholesalers these days is a different experience to what it was ten years ago. Where once there were crowds of small retailers filling shopping trolleys with stock, nowadays you could be the only customer in a huge warehouse.

The Internet and Internet suppliers have eaten away at Manchester’s position as the jewellery capital of the UK. The suppliers are still there, and probably will remain for many years to come, but the pre-eminence of these warehouse based jewellery wholesalers is gone.

The truth is, choice is not that great and consumers are not as focused on colour as you might think. Our experience has been that it’s far better to stock fifty unique styles in one colour than it is to carry twenty lines in each of three colours.

Your customers – or most of them – are far more interested in the style of jewellery you are selling than they are in the colour. If they don’t have a blouse to match the colour you carry, they are just as likely to buy a new top than they are to buy a different necklace. So take a little friendly advice and pay more attention to the styles your jewellery wholesaler is stocking than the colour.

Did you know that in 2011 necklaces with a heart or flower shaped design are out selling every other necklace design by a factor of three?

Relying on your own sales figures to determine which are good sellers is time consuming and costly. It could take you years to really know your customers and what they want, and by then tastes will have moved on. But what if you could lean on the sales figures of 400-500 other jewellery retailers today?

This is what our bestsellers page offers you. It’s a top 15 page, listing our current best sellers. The items on this page are out-selling the rest of our catalogue by a factor of 10 or greater, as jewellery sellers from London to Cornwall to Scotland keep ordering them.

The best seller page is updated in real time, as orders are placed. If you want to have a very good Christmas, check it out now. Then Bookmark it and check it out again tomorrow, and the day after. Use it to help you choose which styles to order.

Here’s the link: Our Bestsellers Page

And remember, best sellers sell out fast, and all of our customers know about this page. Christmas is just around the corner, and you need to be ready. If best sellers are sold out, look for similar styles or check back tomorrow, at which point new necklaces and bracelets will have risen in the rankings.

While some individual retailers may not be great at choosing popular lines, collectively, 400-500 retailers usually DO know what they are doing. Trust them and you won’t go far wrong.

Once again, here’s the best sellers page:

http://www.NirvanaWholesale.com/?cn=15

At the moment, five of our six best selling lines contain at least one heart somewhere in the design. In all other respects, these items are very different to each other, but for some reason, jewellery with hearts goes down very well.

Of course, this means we tend to stock a lot of jewellery with heart or flower elements in the design, but this keeps everyone happy: us, our customers, and their customers.