Chaos and tariffs put a wrench in your jewelry business

Anyone else feeling the whiplash of the “will they or won’t they” tariffs?

• Will the costs of our tools and equipment go up?

• Wait, where was that setting bur made?

• How is this going to impact gemstones?

• How am I supposed to prepare for this?

Ah yes, the tricks and issues they didn’t teach you in jewelry school. Many people have asked me where I got my love of systems and supply chains from, and well, I don’t know that I’d call it love so much as I’d call it an area where I can hyper focus.

But seriously, our industry has taught me so much about global supply chains – where materials come from, all the places they go, where most of the labor gets done, and where my place is in the system.

Right now that place is “wow that’s a new problem, let’s figure this out!” Because if I wasn’t jumping into Figure Out Mode, I’d probably curl up in a ball (pretty sure some of you feel me on that one too).

Between gold prices hitting new record highs every week, to tariffs on sapphires and lots of other gemstones (and tools), navigating the current landscape of running a jewelry business just got more complicated. There are lots of questions, and a shortage of clear answers.

So let’s hop into Figure Out Mode together.

Want to watch or listen to this instead? I put an 8 minute of this over on my You Tube channel.

What can you do to manage your jewelry business in the face of chaos?

And where do you go with your newfound, yet slightly unwanted education?

The first step in managing your jewelry business

Know what YOUR numbers are and what they mean TO YOU. This will be a different framework and answer for almost every designer. You know your profit margin best, you know your pricing structure best, and you know your own boundaries.

We all have different thresholds for what, where, and how we spend in our businesses. Do you need to order burs and drill bits on a regular basis? If so, then keeping an eye on those prices make sense as that is a regular expense in your business. If you don’t go through them very often, then likely this cost will have a negligible impact on your business.

Do you already work in gold and are concerned about the increase in gold costs? That’s understandable! Ensuring that your cash flow projections account for some increase in materials costs and looking at your pricing again are in order for you.

And if you were thinking about developing more work in gold and felt daunted by the current prices, you don’t have to crush your own dreams, but now is a great time to be even more strategic than you had been in the past about HOW you’ll develop new work in gold.

How about gemstones and diamonds? To be honest, we may not know about those just yet as pricing can change due to other factors. For instance, diamond prices have been all over the map in the last couple of years and that has nothing to do with tariffs.

We do know that labor on gemstones will be taxed, but whether or not the raw materials will also be subject to tariffs depends on where the raw materials are mined.

What else can you do to manage your jewelry business?

Lean all the way onto your craft.

In times of trouble, art gets weirder (complimentary), and I think it’s time to get extra weird with our art. Making distinctive work is, believe it or not, a most excellent sales tool. And it is also creatively satisfying. Why does this work? Because it encourages people to seek out what only YOU can offer.

Increasing the artistry of your work makes you more competitive. If a consumer has to compare two like products to each other, then they have to go looking for a reason to buy from one vendor vs the other. If the art is stand alone and can’t be gotten anywhere else, then consumers have to come to you.

Other places to focus your time and energy in your Jewelry Business

It is always a good time to review pricing strategy. It is always a good time to understand what your financial projections are telling you, and it is always a good time to lean on your own artistry.

In the past, during relatively calm times for gold prices, I would recommend that my clients audit their pricing once a year – typically before a major show. Over the past 2 years, as gold has steadily and then sharply increased, that advice changed from once a year to twice a year minimum, and spot checking before major trade and craft shows to ensure that they are not losing money.

If this sounds like I am telling you to “do it all”, I am.

But I am NOT telling you to do it all at once. Pick one task from these tips and spend a half a day, or even one hour. One day, review pricing, on another day, do the research and development on a new piece or series, on a different day, review your profit margins – take bite-sized steps and you’ll get there – I believe in you.

Our podcast is live!

A few weeks ago I shared that my business buddy Alana Rivera and I started a podcast. You can listen to our first episode here.