http://businessandleadership.com/exporting/…nirvana/

As mentioned in the article, despite the poor economic situation in the UK and especially in Ireland, we’re on track for a very good year. We’ve succeeded in formalising the situation with our overseas suppliers, and introduced stringent quality control measures – all with the aim of delivering new lines of quality jewellery to our customers on a monthly basis.

We’ve never targeted local businesses direct, preferring to do business online and in the UK, but the recent coverage has brought a lot of interest from local retailers who were unaware we existed. Using the Internet to source stock is not as common in Ireland as it is in the UK, and this exposure has already helped generate new business.

We’re not alone in selling jewellery online, but we are alone in many of the styles we stock. Most UK and Irish retailers will never have encountered the necklaces, bracelets and fashion rings that fill our catalogue. Unlike many of our competitors, we’d sooner stock 50 fantastic lines than 500 mediocre or boring lines.

Over the past four years, we’ve sourced jewellery from many different manufacturers. Now, in 2012, we’ve reached the stage where we have a solid core of suppliers delivering the unusual styles we need every month, and all to the highest standard.

Last month we re-designed our website – the first re-design since we went live in 2008 – making it easier for customers to browse our catalogue and find all the information they  might need. We moved our best sellers page, an incredibly valuable resource for jewellery sellers, making it accessible from every page on the site.

And we’re expecting 2012 to be our best year ever. We hope you’ll stay with us through the year as we have some great new jewellery lined up.

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.

What does this mean if you are holding large stocks of ladies watches?

The good news is, men are as clueless about women’s fashion today as they have always been. With Christmas around the corner – one of the two times of the year when men are out buying jewellery in earnest – you have an opportunity to offload some of those watches.

To make the most of the Christmas season, you should ensure your watches are well displayed and packaged – make them look like an irresistible gift, and take as much of the decision away from men as possible. And if you happen to have any left over after Christmas, the run up to Valentine’s day will provide the perfect opportunity to offload whatever remains.

We recommend that your retail price be between 2.5 and 3.5 times the wholesale price + VAT. This would give a necklace wholesaling at £5 a list price in your shop of £15 – £21. That price assumes you are VAT registered.

Why the wide price range?

Different retailers selling in different places to different customers. A High Street shop might charge the higher price while a market trader might sell at the lower price. A jewellery party planner might charge a price somewhere in the middle. You should resist the temptation to charge more then this, as while you may sell a small number of items at the inflated price, it’s simply not sustainable. The markups for fashion jewellery are well understood by most jewellery retailers, and if you venture outside these bounds – higher or lower – you are likely to find yourself in difficulty.

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.

What marks a customer out as successful?

They don’t zero in on the cheapest items. A common mistake amongst retailers starting out selling jewellery is that they buy only cheap items, incorrectly thinking that a large number of cheap necklaces and bracelets is better than a small number of higher priced items.

This is not the case, but sadly, many retailers never learn this lesson.

In the world of fashion jewellery retail, the highest profits are to be made by stocking and selling mid to higher priced jewellery. Items that retail for £15 – £35. Lower priced items – what is often called Junk Jewellery – is the domain of cheap chain stores, not independent retailers.

If you attempt to target women looking for junk jewellery, you’re business is unlikely to thrive or grow. This is explained in greater detail in our free eBook “Starting a Successful Jewellery Business.“

We know all the major players in the jewellery import and wholesale business in the UK, and none of them, to the best of our knowledge, carry jewellery manufactured in the UK. To put it simply, there are no UK Jewellery Manufacturers remaining who produce fashion and costume jewellery.

You can find handmade jewellery that was manufactured in England, but it will only be on a small scale – a single woman working from home and selling at parties or fairs, for example. And you can find higher end jewellery suppliers (gold and silver) who manufacture in the UK in their own small to medium sized work rooms.

But when it comes to bulk manufacturing of fashion jewellery, all of this has been exported to the Far East – China in particular. British Jewellery Wholesalers source the bulk of their stock from Chinese manufacturers – even those lines that appear to come from other ethnic regions.

If you are determined to ‘keep it local’ the best you can do is source from local wholesalers. While the jewellery will still be manufactured in China, at least you will know that some of the jobs are in the UK and that some of the money stays in the country.