Upscale Accents

Walk the handcrafted section of any gift show, and you'll be surrounded by jewelry offerings created by fine artists. Though many retailers tend to shy away from the higher price points that handmade jewelry represents, this type of merchandise can be a real boon to your business if approached correctly. Jewelry can help round out your product range and draw sales from customers ostensibly shopping for someone else, but in reality open to purchasing for themselves. That's what Raymond Boozer, owner of Apartment 48 in New York, has noticed since introducing jewelry last fall in response to customer requests.

However, handmade jewelry is closer to fine art than a typical gift line, and needs to be approached accordingly, especially since you'll usually be buying direct from the artists who have invested a great deal of personal commitment in their work.

From selecting to merchandising handmade jewelry, here are 20 tips to bear in mind before you hit the show floor.

1. Sometimes you can judge a booth by its cover. If you know what you're looking for it's a simple way to trim down the number of vendors you need to visit.
2. Visit all the booths you intend to see before committing to one vendor. That way, you won't kick yourself later on when you find that perfect line.
3. The taste of your customers is more important than your own. Bob Trezise is the jewelry buyer for the Phoenix Shop at the world-renowned restaurant Nepanthe in Big Sur, California. The sprawling venue carries 50 jewelry lines, and includes 17 other departments with six buyers in all. When Trezise buys, he always thinks of the customer first. "I don't buy [a line] because I think [it's] cool," he says. "Frankly, my tastes can be a little off from those of my customers."
4. Look for the whole package. According to Trezise, an ideal piece has a balance of uniqueness and salability, all at a reasonable price.
5. Your selections must fit with the aesthetic of the rest of your store. "A lot of people are looking for a price range without so much as a look," notes Alix Blüh of Modern Relics, San Francisco. That strategy won't be conducive to selling high-ticket jewelry.
6. Don't pick several lines and meet the minimum on each. This will result in a disjointed array of product and, in Boozer's opinion, might confuse the customer.
7. Buy enough from each vendor to make a big statement. According to Jennifer Dawes of Jennifer Dawes Design, Marshall, California, "That statement is what pushes the customer to [become a] buyer. If the customer sees a good collection of work and sees that the gallery is really invested in an artist, it gives them more reason to invest or collect themselves."
8. If you love the product, but don't love the people behind it, it's probably a good idea to keep shopping. "There are exceptions," Trezise states. "There are lines that are just so good that even if the person you have to deal with is difficult, you know you're going to do it."
9. Become friendly with the vendors you carry. "The galleries that do best are the ones I'm friends with," says Jennifer Dawes. And if they like you, artists might even give you half an order on consignment to help plump-out your range. Another vendor sends favored retailers a box of new samples to peruse, inviting them to keep what they want and send everything else back.
10. A good relationship is a two-way street. "I have really cordial relations with everyone I deal with," Trezise notes. It might be as simple as calling after you've had a line for a while, just to let the vendor know how it's doing.
11. Make any lines you carry part of your brand by featuring them in advertising and signage.
12. Your staffers should be able to discuss not only the materials used in a given piece, but the artist's motivation as well. Says Trezise, "Who made it, where it was made, where the person came from, why they chose a given technique; that's the sort of thing I emphasize."
13. That said, information about techniques and workmanship can definitely justify higher prices. If a customer questions why a pair of earrings retails at $300, a savvy salesperson will answer, according to Alix Blüh, " 'Well, they're 14-kt. gold, they're hand-carved and hand-painted, the Czechoslovakian crystal is from the 1920s, and there's engraving.' Then there's a whole story line behind it." By the time the salesperson finishes telling the story, the customer will be hooked.
14. Romance the jewelry. "Make every piece look special," Blüh recommends. "Don't throw it in with a ton of other pieces that will sap its meaning."
15. Think outside the box to go beyond the typical display case format to design that emphasizes the uniqueness of handmade jewelry. At Apartment 48, where customers browse through rooms that mimic actual living areas, jewelry is displayed in the "bedroom" alongside everything from linens to perfume bottles, as well as in the "bathroom" amongst personal care product.
16. Ask artists for promotional images that you can display alongside their product. To brand her line, Blüh uses a postcard of her great-great grandmother, taken in 1852, the year she migrated from Scotland. "I use that image over and over so people know it's my line." The image fits perfectly into the "story" of her line, which touches on Victorian themes and even has "1852" carved into many of the pieces.
17. If you see a booth that you love, feel free to ask the vendor for display ideas. "I get complimented on my booth almost more than I do my jewelry," Blüh laughs. Blüh's suggestions for displaying her line include color-copying Victorian tintype photographs, blowing the images up, and placing them under her product.
18. Keep it clean. The most common mistake Blüh sees clients make is not maintaining the pristine look of her work. "Tarnish can spread overnight," she explains. "Make [your pieces] look new everyday, because the second silver starts to tarnish, customers won't notice it."
19. Move your selections around. "When galleries don't switch their cases around and play with their displays, stuff begins to look stale," notes Dawes. "When there's movement and action, customers can sense that, and are more apt to buy. The galleries that do that are always calling me [to reorder]."
20. Encourage even the most casual browser to hold the jewelry and try it on. "One gallery sold nine of my pieces in three days. They had one customer who was interested in buying just one ring, so they gave her a whole stack to play with," Dawes says. "Thirty minutes later, she bought three."