Starting line
Launching my debut collection after six months
My website is now live! Almost exactly six months after initially being curious about learning to make jewelry, I can say that I have a jewelry collection that I designed and made by hand.
While I feel quite accomplished with my progress so far, it’s like being excited to make it to the starting line of a marathon. A lot of hard work and lessons are behind me, and even more are ahead.
Reflections on the past six months
I have so many learnings that it is hard to decide where to begin. In order to keep this post somewhat succinct, I will break down my reflections into three main categories: jewelry-making, business, and the importance of perseverance.
Reflections: jewelry-making
There are many ways you can use to make jewelry. I use a combination of the lost wax casting method (making a piece in wax, molding it, and pouring metal into the molded cavity) and fabrication (making a piece directly in metal). I also incorporate wire-wrapping when I work with pearls.
Regardless of the jewelry-making method, there are two core skills that I think are fundamental to creating any piece. If you are interested in learning to make jewelry, I recommend starting with these:
Filing/sanding
Polishing
Optional: wire-wrapping - it is one of the easiest and lowest cost methods of making jewelry and is a good entry to encourage you to think about how to construct a piece.
If it’s accessible, formal training and mentors are invaluable. I apprentice at ileava jewelry in Tokyo and attend weekly metal-smithing school. Without these two resources, there is no way that I would have been able to launch a website and initial collection within six months of starting.
For self-learning, I recommend the following:
Creative Stone Setting (book by John Cogswell)
MiteraMade Youtube (fun, vlog-style videos that share simple jewelry-making tips)
WaxCarvers (Instagram/online courses about wax carving)
In one of my earlier posts, I list near the bottom all of the wax-working tools that I bought when I first got started.
As a general tip, try before you are ready. Try making a piece that is a bit too advanced, try using the materials you want, try a weird design. Actually making things is the best way to speed up the learning process.
Reflections: business
Like with any business, finance and marketing are core to starting and building a jewelry brand.
As a hobby, initial costs for making jewelry can stay as low as a few hundred dollars - mostly for basic tools and a small quantity of raw materials - and slowly increase as needed. As a business, initial costs run much higher:
Tools - several hundreds to thousands of dollars
Casting services (if you use the lost wax casting method to make jewelry) - depends on the caster
Shipping costs to mail pieces to/from the caster
Raw materials (using gold or platinum and high-quality gemstones will easily cost hundreds of dollars a piece; silver or other metals, less so)
Website (domain, hosting, e-commerce platform) - several hundred dollars
Photography - you can use your phone, but a high-quality camera and macro lens will cost at least ~$2k total; a professional photoshoot can cost several thousand dollars
Packaging - several hundred dollars to buy in bulk
Marketing - up to you, but unless you have special connections or a pre-existing platform, you will likely need to invest in search or social media ads
While the total cost of launching a jewelry brand varies significantly based on the raw materials used, the number of pieces, and level of marketing polish desired, I can now easily see how this article estimated the minimum cost to launch a jewelry brand as $37k.
I finance my jewelry endeavor personally, so fortunately I have not spent $37k (yet!). But I certainly invested a lot more than I initially expected. It helps that I love making jewelry and would probably spend close to the same amount of money (less the photography and website costs) if I were keeping the activity purely as a hobby.
My professional background is in finance, so I made a simple financial model template designed specifically for small jewelry businesses. I use it to track my own financials.
The realm of marketing jewelry is still a bit of a mystery to me. Obviously, leveraging social media is a major pillar of any modern consumer products business strategy. However, it’s less clear to me how to effectively do so. I don’t even have a personal Instagram account anymore!
From what I observe, a lot of jewelry brands’ online presence leans either toward a) presenting the designer/maker as a sort of lifestyle influencer whose personal brand is intertwined with the jewelry brand or b) keeping the brand separate from any one individual and featuring only the products. I’m not sure which feels more authentic to me so I’ll have to experiment. You can follow me on Instagram here if you’d like to follow along.
I think I enjoy reentering the social media world now through a business lens (it’s kind of fun taking photos and making little videos!), but it’s certainly daunting to realize that you effectively have to keep posting… forever. Or at least as long as a platform is widely used. On most platforms, old posts aren’t surfaced, so to gain visibility and social proof you are basically on an endless marketing carousel with a very quick rotational cadence.
Aside from social media marketing, there are also marketing opportunities via trade shows and in-person events. I have yet to do these activities, but would like to in the coming months/years.
Reflections: perseverance
Arguably the biggest lesson I’ve learned in the past few months is that learning a new skill and building a business takes time. Not just a few days, weeks, or six months. It takes years or decades. Expecting anything shorter is at best naive and at worst arrogant.
I’ve had quite a few moments of frustration. Expensive mistakes made, inabilities to make the designs in my imagination, inexperience marketing and conveying a narrative.
The flip side of these frustrations though are lessons in perseverance, patience, and humility. Especially when you are an adult comfortably in the flow of life and sticking to the things you are “good” at (like me starting this at 30 years old after finally feeling like I know a thing or two about finance), it is so humbling and exciting to dive into something completely novel.
Looking ahead
One of my most recent pieces is a dainty set of hoop earrings. In the future, I want to make more delicate pieces. Smaller pieces are often easier to wear everyday, and practically speaking with the price of gold at record highs, I am mindful of creating jewelry that is still solid gold of the highest quality while also offered at more accessible price points (smaller pieces = less gold = less $).
I’m very excited to focus on pieces that feature gemstones. I love working with Akoya pearls and want to also include precious natural stones. Some pieces in the works (both physically and in my imagination!) feature opals, aquamarines, sapphires, and diamonds. Further down the road, I’d like to make engagement rings.
My biggest priority is to further develop and refine my jewelry-making abilities. In addition to learning stone-setting techniques, I would love to engrave jewelry. I specifically want to study traditional Japanese engraving and incorporate those in future pieces. Modern jewelry engraving typically involves lasers or handheld motorized gravers; traditional Japanese engraving uses specific hammer and chisel techniques.
As you can imagine based on the list of things I’d like to learn and make, I have a long road ahead of which I’m just at the start. To all my friends and family who have been so supportive along the way, a massive heartfelt thank you! :)
So proud of you! Can’t wait to see what the next six months and years bring!!