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

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.

Yesterday, our latest range of Fashion Rings went live on the website. They were made specially for us, so you won’t find these particular designs anywhere else. The price range is similar to the older lines, and they are just as colourful.

Some time ago we noticed that a percentage of repeat customers always place small orders - around the £45 figure - and that they place these orders frequently, often every week, or more than once a week.

This is a very expensive way to buy your jewellery, the reason being that each small order is charged the standard delivery rate of £9.95. On a minimum sized order, shipping adds 22% to the cost of the goods. If you place 5 orders a month, that’s an extra £49.75, and it’s an expense you don’t need to pay. Orders above £225 shipped to the UK and Ireland are delivered for free. For someone who places regular, small, weekly orders, placing one large order instead of 5 small ones would save you that 22%.

We don’t make any money on postage. We charge the customer what we are charged by DHL, so it makes no difference to us whether you place large or small orders, but it certainly could make a difference to you.

Now, it’s quite possible that for cash flow reasons, placing an order above £225 is just not feasible, but the higher value your order, the lower the proportional costs of shipping, as shipping rates do not rise in line with your order. A £100 order still incurs £9.95 in shipping costs, but that only amounts to a 10% addition to the cost of the goods. For a £200 order, it drops still further to under 5%, and above £225, it disappears completely.

The bottom line here, is that small orders cost you money, and large orders save you money.

The level of packaging required will vary from retailer to retailer: high street shops, for example, tend to go to much greater effort and expense when presenting jewellery than a market trader would, even though they might both be selling the same items.

It’s always easier if you can buy everything you need from a single source, but this is rarely the best approach. There’s a price for convenience, and in the current economic uncertainty, getting the best goods for the best price is more important than ever.

For quality packaging, we recommend a UK company called Packaging World. We’ve found their lines to be quite tasteful and competitively priced, and their ability to handle small as well as large order quantities would suit many of our customers. As an added bonus, they do offer free shipping across the UK.

This is all well and good, as regular customers who are familiar with our catalogue will always see the freshest, newest lines first, but it doesn’t help when your budget or your end customer is geared towards one end of the price spectrum or the other.

With this in mind, we’ve added some extra sorting options to our catalogue pages that allow you to change the order items appear in. The default is as it is now, which is newest items first. Two further options: Highest Priced and Lowest Priced, will sort the catalogue by the cost of each item.

This means that you can easily look at all of our cheapest or most expensive lines side by side. If you’re shopping within a particular price range, this should make your browsing a whole lot easier. Once you change the sort order to the option that suits you, it will be remembered for your current visit to our website. The next time you visit, the default of newest items first will again apply.

With this in mind, we’ve put together a Customer Testimonials Page. We haven’t edited any of the comments, beyond correcting a few spelling errors and removing the odd word that might identify the person or business being quoted. As already mentioned, retailers do not like other retailers knowing where they source their stock. Our hope is that this page will help alleviate some of the fears buyers may have before placing that first order.

If you have any comments you’d like to make about our business or stock that you feel might help your fellow retailers, please contact us and we’ll be happy to post them on our testimonials page.

During a recent stock take, we came across a small selection of weightier silver chains we thought we had sold out of. These chains can be worn independently, or with an accompanying pendant. Quantities are small, and they are all priced and sold individually, rather than as batches.

Our latest watches come in a variety of styles and price ranges, from £3.72 to over £7.00. We have 60 lines available, and expect to have more in a few weeks. The time for retailers to be stocking up for Christmas is getting closer, which is why we’re introducing these new watches now.

As usual, none of our watches are boxed, which allows us to offer them at very competitive prices, both per item, and on delivery charges. As well as our ladies watches, we have a very small number of Gent’s Expander watches. These designs are old and timeless, and worn by all age groups. We don’t normally stock men’s jewellery, but we thought we’d give these few watches a try, and see how they go.