One of the most common questions asked by anyone new to jewellery design is “How much should I charge for my jewellery?”. Well, firstly you need to decide your goals…

   1. Is this a hobby or a business?
   2. Is this going to generate your income?
   3. What are your long term goals for the business? (Do you plan to keep it as a home based business without employees or are you aiming for global domination of the jewellery market? Or somewhere in between?)
   4. Do you intend to sell your work on a wholesale basis to stores?
   5. What is your target market?
   6. What type of jewellery are you designing?

There are a vast number of jewellery designers selling their work with an equally vast range of goals. Many jewellery designers underprice their work in an attempt to generate sales or kick start their business and then find that the business simply isn’t viable with this approach in the longer term when they have considered the time, effort and other costs involved in running their business (website, travel, postage, packaging, advertising, trade shows, craft fairs, display equipment, photography equipment, etc). This example focuses mainly on those intending to build a business and generate an income from their work.

You will need to make a decision fairly early on about whether you want to get lots of sales and make less money on each sale or fewer sales with more profit on each sale. This decision should be based on your product, sales approach and target market.

Wholesale Pricing

    * Any retailer reselling your jewellery will put their own mark up on your work. This mark up is typically 250% and you should expect their mark up to be significantly higher than yours. Why is their mark up so much? Remember that stores have high overhead costs such as rent, rates, insurance and wages; at the end of the day many stores will make less profit on the jewellery than you will.
    * Your wholesale pricing will depend on your goals for the business as listed above. Some jewellery designers price their work at the cost of materials plus a very small mark up, these tend to be designers creating jewellery as a hobby. Others carefully calculate the cost of all materials and labour (at a set hourly rate) and then apply a fixed mark up.
    * If you are designing jewellery to generate an income rather than for hobby purposes then the only viable approach in the long term is to calculate the exact costs of all of your materials and labour at a fixed hourly rate (including labour in the cost is very important especially if you intend to employ people at a later date) and then apply a fixed mark up.
    * So how much of a mark up? You need to find a healthy balance between a mark up that will allow stores to add their 250% mark up and not price the jewellery out of the market and a mark up that will allow you to generate a profit, even at a later date when you have employees. I would recommend a mark up of between 50% to 100%
    * This mark up isn’t all profit and will need to cover all of your overheads including your website, insurance, trade shows, equipment, etc.
    * Be careful not to put too low of a mark up on your jewellery to try and attract interest from stores. You may get more sales using this approach but you won’t necessarily make more money and it will mean working twice as hard.

Retail Pricing

    * If you are also selling your work on a wholesale basis to stores then you need to be very careful not to undercut the stores reselling your designs as this will quickly sour and potentially end your relationship.
    * If you don’t currently sell on a wholesale basis but are considering doing so then you need to bear this in mind when pricing your jewellery; If you put a mark up on your jewellery that will make its retail price less than a store reselling the jewellery will need to charge for it then you will struggle to sell your work on a wholesale basis as you will be undercutting the retailers.
    * If you may sell your work on a wholesale basis at any time in the future then price your work according to the guidelines above adding a wholesale mark up and then a retail mark up on top of that.
    * If you have no intention of ever selling your work on a wholesale basis then you do have greater flexibility in your pricing structure however you should bear in mind that often customers associate quality with price.
    * Remember it is so much easier to reduce your prices than to increase them once you have an established customer base. If you price your work too low then you won’t have any flexibility to offer any discounts or negotiate pricing.
    * An important point to consider is your target market. If you are selling costume jewellery then your market is more price sensitive however if you are selling fine jewellery then often your customers are not very price sensitive.
    * If you are mass producing your jewellery then your prices may need to be lower. If you are producing one of a kind items then emphasize the exclusivity of the jewellery and price accordingly.

Remember that if your work is well designed using quality materials and marketed in an appropriate way for your target market it will always sell.