How to start a jewelry business, from first design to first run

Make it yourself or have it made

Making every piece yourself at a bench works for a few pieces a week, and it is the cheapest way to test designs. It stops working when a design sells faster than you can make it, or when it needs casting, plating or stone setting at a volume you cannot do by hand.

The choice also changes what you can say about the product. The FTC's jewelry guides treat a piece as handmade only if the entire shaping and forming of such product from raw materials and its finishing and decoration were accomplished by hand labor and manually-controlled methods^[1]. A ring cast from your wax model in a workshop, or a chain you finish by hand from factory-made links, does not meet that test. Call it designed by you, or hand-finished if that is what you do, and keep "handmade" for pieces you truly form yourself.

Many brands end up with a mix: signature pieces made in-house, and the bestsellers, chains and findings produced by a jewelry manufacturer to their design or picked from its range under a private label jewelry arrangement.

The steps

1. Choose a lane and a price point. Fine jewelry in solid gold, demi-fine in vermeil or heavy plating, and fashion jewelry in plated brass or stainless steel are different businesses, with different materials costs, return rates and customers. Pick one to start.
2. Choose the metal and finish, and check what you can call it. The table below shows the thresholds behind each common label. Write the target into your spec: the base metal, the karat of any gold layer, and the plating thickness in microns.
3. Turn each design into a spec a workshop can quote. Give drawings or a model, dimensions, target weight, stone type and size, clasp and finding types, plating color and thickness, and how each piece is packed. A vague spec produces quotes you cannot compare.
4. Ask for quotes and minimums from more than one workshop. Find out each one's MOQ for every design and plating color, what it charges to make molds or tooling, and how long samples take compared with a full run.
5. Approve a sample before you pay for a run. Wear it for a week. Check the finish, the clasp, the weight and any skin reaction, then sign off the pre-production sample as the standard the run must match.
6. Settle your stamps. If a piece will carry a karat, sterling or other quality mark, decide the trademark that goes next to it, as explained below, and send both to the workshop with the approved sample.
7. Check the run before it ships. A quality inspection at the workshop catches uneven plating, loose stones and wrong stamps while they can still be fixed.
8. Price it landed, then set retail. Add freight, duty, entry fees and packaging to the workshop price, as in the example below, before you set your retail price.

What each metal label requires

Nothing stops you selling plated jewelry. What the FTC's guides police is the description: a label that promises more metal than the piece holds. These are the lines the guides draw:

Two practical points follow. On a sterling silver base, the thickness of the gold layer is what separates gold plated silver from vermeil, so ask each workshop what thickness its price assumes and have it measured at inspection. And gold filled, vermeil and gold plated pieces can look alike on a product page, so name the construction in the listing, not only in the photos.

Stones have their own rule. If you sell stones grown in a laboratory, the guides say a stone's name, or a word such as gem or stone, must be immediately preceded with equal conspicuousness by the word “laboratory-grown,” “laboratory-created,” “[manufacturer name]-created,” or some other word or phrase of like meaning^[5]. The word faux is not an adequate disclosure that the stone is not a mined stone^[5].

Quality stamps and your trademark

Stamping a karat or sterling mark brings in a federal statute as well as the FTC's guides. The National Gold and Silver Stamping Act covers, among others, a manufacturer or dealer that imports into any State any such article of merchandise bearing any such quality mark or stamp^[6], meaning a mark that says the piece is made in whole or in part of gold or silver. Before such pieces are shipped between states or by mail, the dealer must apply its own trademark, which has been duly registered or applied for registration under the laws of the United States within thirty days after an article bearing the trademark is placed in commerce or imported into the United States, or the name of such person^[6]. The trademark goes on by the same means as that used in applying the quality mark or stamp appearing thereon, in type or lettering at least as large as that used in such quality mark or stamp, and in a position as close as possible to that quality mark or stamp^[6].

The same Act limits what a plated piece may carry. A plated article may not be stamped with a mark that indicates the fineness of gold unless such word or mark be accompanied by other words, plainly indicating that such article or part thereof is made of rolled gold plate, gold plate, or gold electroplate, or is gold filled^[6].

For a new brand importing stamped pieces, that means filing for your US trademark early, or using your business name, and giving the workshop artwork for both marks at the sample stage. Adding a trademark stamp after the run is made means rework.

Safety rules for adult and children's pieces

For adult jewelry, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says there are no mandatory federal requirements specifically for jewelry^[7]. It points instead to two industry consensus standards: ASTM F2999^[7], the Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Adult Jewelry, and ASTM F2923^[7], the Standard Specification for Consumer Product Safety for Children's Jewelry. Ask your workshop which of these it tests to, and ask for the reports.

Children's jewelry is different: the CPSC says it must meet the rules for children's products. Its accessible parts must not contain more than 100 parts per million (ppm) of total lead content^[8], and manufacturers and importers must third-party test their product using a CPSC-accepted laboratory^[8]. If you plan a kids' line, or your designs and marketing would appeal mainly to children, budget for that testing before you order, not after. The CPSC notes a number of exemptions and exceptions to the third party testing requirement^[8], depending on the product, so ask a CPSC-accepted laboratory which tests your pieces need.

What a first run costs, landed

A first run of 500 pairs of gold-plated brass earrings

Line	Amount
Workshop price, 500 pairs at $3.40, FCA the origin airport	$1,700
Molds and sampling, paid to the workshop, one time	$350
Air freight and insurance	$260
Duty at 11% (assumed) of the workshop price plus the mold charge	$226
Customs broker and entry fees	$175
Pouches, cards and inserts	$300
Landed cost	$3,011
Landed cost per pair	$6.02

Illustrative figures, not a quote. Real prices depend on the spec, quantity and factory.

The mold charge sits in the duty line because customs value starts from the price actually paid, which means the total payment made, or to be made, for imported merchandise by the buyer to, or for the benefit of, the seller^[9]. The one-time molds and the packaging carry a lot of weight in a run this small. On a reorder of the same design they fall away or shrink, which is why the second run is usually the one that shows your real margin. Country-specific duties can change the duty line, so check the rate for your product and origin in the import duty and landed cost guide before you rely on it.

Getting quotes

Tell us the metal, finish, plating thickness and stamps you want, and we introduce you to jewelry workshops that fit, overseas first, each one named; if none fits, we tell you. It is free for brands, and we are not a party to the sale: each workshop quotes you directly, and any order is between you and the workshop you choose. Ask every quote for its shipping terms so you can rebuild the table above with real numbers.