Metal Casting Zone Info Blog

Profit demands are reducing the sources for quality wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry manufacturers daily. Some now prefer to produce the more lucrative gold jewelry and most of the others will only accept very large orders. Samsoneinc.com is one of the few quality

wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry manufacturers that will produce small quantities of custom designs at a reasonable price.

Quality wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry manufacturing starts with good craftsmanship and materials. The basic information needed to create wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry are the designs, the volume of the order, the metal weight and, for the manufacturer to properly calculate silver weight and cost, the dimension of the jewelry and gemstones required must be given. Of these, the order volume will have the greatest impact on the final cost.

Once we receive this information and a sample of the design at Samsoneinc.com, there is an $80 charge for making the mold of the design and a minimum order quantity of 50 pieces per style with a required 50% deposit. Usually it takes us 4-6 weeks to manufacture custom sterling silver jewelry.

In cases where the order volume is very large, the charge for the mold can be waived.

If you are using gemstones and/or diamonds in your designs, take care to discuss the selection process beforehand. Be aware when you are choosing a manufacturer for your wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry that very often you will find manufacturers who use extremely low grade diamonds and gemstones, which can be effected by poor color, inclusions, cracks and other flaws to cut costs.

To produce quality wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry you need a certain metal weight. When you use a light weight of silver, the costs may be cheaper, but the result is jewelry that will bend or twist at the slightest impact. It will prevent your gemstones or diamonds from being firmly mounted, resulting in frequent repairs which is not the ideal for sterling silver jewelry.

Bear in mind that wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry manufacturing is a labour intensive process that requires skilled craftsmen, which are not easy to find and whose fees are quite substantial.

Although your wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry will be made by a mechanical casting process, it requires hand finishing by skilled craftsmen to be complete. Time is a factor in this process, but this is the best way to ensure good quality wholesale silver jewelry.

The good news is that re-orders of the same design will cost less than the initial one, because the mold is already made. Outside of this factor, remember that the cost of the silver and gemstones can vary and this will affect the total cost.

Samsoneinc.com can provide you with exquisite wholesale custom sterling silver jewelry pieces, which are perfect accessories for any occasion.

For those of you who are thinking about selling gold jewelry, it is crucial that you understand fully how to determine the price for gold jewelry. Not only this can help you to tell a good deal from a bad one, it also helps to analyze your competitors and understand the market better before you make any investment.

Gold price

The most important part of wholesale gold jewelry trading is to understand the breakdown of the cost of a piece of gold jewelry. Let‘s say the current good price is $500 per ounce. To calculate the cost of gold for a piece of 14 karat gold jewelry that weighs 3 gram without any stones, we first divide the price per ounce by 31.5, to get the price per gram, which is $15.87. This is the price of pure gold. To convert this to 14K gold, knowing that there are 24 karats in pure gold, we divide $15.87 by 24 and multiply the result by 14. The price per gram for 14k gold is roughly $9.26. Therefore, the total cost of the gold for a 3 gram ring would be $27.78.

Labor Cost

Another major part of the cost for a piece of gold jewelry is the cost for labor, especially for pieces set with precious stones. Gold jewelry generally requires some filing and polishing after it is cast out of the mold. The labor cost can sometime be as high as $2 per gram, depending on the origin of the jewelry and the style. In addition, the cost of setting any stones on a gold jewelry can be over one dollar per stone. Certain advanced setting such as channel set and invisible set cost even more because of the high level of craftsmanship required.

Markup of Competitors

A good way to analyze if a certain style of gold jewelry is profitable and beneficial for a business is to understand your competitors’ prices. Since you already know how to calculate roughly the cost of a piece of jewelry, and therefore the price that you can get it, buy looking at the markups of your competitors, you may get an idea of how severe the competition is. For instance, if the competitors are marking up the jewelry three times of the cost, the competitiveness of that style is not really that high. On the other, if everyone has the same pricing and the markup is 50% above the cost, the style might have already saturated the market.

Volume trading

Another angle of looking at the pricing issue is that when the competitors are marking up at a low margin, the item is probably accepted by a lot of consumers. The justification behind it is that when the profit per piece is low, and people are trading them actively, there probably is a high demand for it. On short, the higher the profit margin, the low the volume of sales and the low the profit margin, the higher could be the volume of sales. Another point that is worth noting is that the volume theory also applies to jewelry vendors. If you buy in large quantity, pricing should go down automatically. Therefore, running a successfully business involves getting the balance between all the factors within the resources and infrastructure you have such as employees and capital.

Closeout Jewelry

Since jewelry business is highly time-sensitive, styles that were once popular several months ago may not sell at all couple months later. Therefore, when buying gold jewelry wholesale, you should estimate the monthly sales and stock according to the sale volume. For example, you may want to stock a certain style for two months worth of stock and restock it when it runs out in order to minimize the closeout items in the inventory, which is sometimes referred to as inventory shrinkage.

By understanding the market and your competitors before buy wholesale gold jewelry, you can reduce the mistakes during your entrepreneurial endeavor, thus increase the chance of succeeding tremendously.

Have you seen similar silver jewelry sold at price difference of two to three times from different retailers? Have you ever wondered how retailers mark up the jewelry after they get them from the venders? Here we will show you the wholesale trading secrets of sterling silver jewelry.

Price per gram

The most important piece of information for determining the price of a piece of sterling silver jewelry is the price per gram of the silver. This is the fundamental raw material cost of a piece of sterling silver jewelry due to the fact that silver is considered a precious metal. For instance, the price for silver is $9.5 per ounce, the price per gram is determined by dividing the price per ounce by 31.5, which is 30 cents. Therefore, the cost for the raw material for a 5 gram wedding band ring is roughly $1.5. Some might wonder why people would pay $30 for a silver wedding ring when the silver only cost $1.5. The followings will explain the difference.

Labor cost

To turn raw material into finished goods, it involves a great deal of processing cost. The metal itself has to be melted, molded and cast, polished and assembled. Most of the times, silver jewelry is accented with various stones, the costs for setting the stones are also a major part of the total cost for jewelry, especially for jewelry that requires high level of craftsmanship.

Other materials

Also, the costs for any additional material are added to the jewelry. For instance, a pair silver pearl dangle earrings that has two cultural fresh water pearls with rhodium finish should cost double the price of the silver to make because of the cost of the pearl and rhodium. Note that rhodium is even more expensive than silver itself and it is high tarnish resistant.

Shipping cost

Many styles of jewelry are imported from other countries because of difference in availability of raw materials such as stones and also the specialties in making some particular styles. Hence the shipping cost of transporting is also part of the cost. Usually, for imported sterling silver jewelry, the shipping cost can amount to 10% of what it costs to make the jewelry themselves.

Custom Duties

For the same reasons, imported jewelry incurs duties at the custom. This is a cost that normal consumers are not aware of but it can also increase the price of sterling silver jewelry for 5% to 10%.

Price fluctuations

Some sterling silver jewelry trader, especially wholesaler would associate the price of the jewelry with the current silver price. Therefore, the price of a piece of sterling silver jewelry might be different from month to month, and even day to day in the case of wholesale.

Business Overhead

Just like any other business, the sales have to cover also the overhead of running the business. Normal overhead costs are employees’ salaries, rent, utilities and breakage.

Profit

Of course, the price you pay includes the profit for the sellers.

By knowing the above facts, you can make much more informed decisions when buying wholesale sterling silver jewelry and most importantly, avoid scams. There are occasions when people make fake silver jewelry and sell them at a very low price. If you know how to determine the cost of a piece of silver jewelry, you won’t buy into deals where they offer you a price that is lower than the normal cost of real sterling silver jewelry.

It takes many years of experience in trading sterling silver jewelry to tell whether a piece of jewelry is of high quality or not. Especially when you are buying wholesale silver jewelry, a minor difference in the quality might affect your business reputation in the long run. This article summarizes the basic metrics for anyone who is beginning to trade silver jewelry to gauge the quality of silver jewelry.

Finishing

Most of the sterling silver jewelry has some sort of plating because silver itself turns yellow over time. There are several ways of finishing a piece of silver jewelry and they will affect the cost of the jewelry substantially.

High polished sterling silver jewelry has no plating on the jewelry at all and is particularly popular with engravable items or for people who are allergic to certain metals such as nickel. The jewelry is polished by machine without additional raw material cost.

Some silver jewelry has a black antique look to cater to certain consumers. These items are processed by putting the jewelry into chemical solution to oxide the silver before polishing and the pricing is similar to that of high polished ones.

Another common way of finishing sterling silver jewelry is nickel plating. Although nickel plating is illegal in some countries, most of the Italian silver jewelry sold in the market today is plated with nickel. However, since nickel is not considered as precious metal, the price is usually not affected by the cost of plating.

The most expensive way of finishing sterling silver jewelry is using Rhodium. Rhodium is a precious metal that is even more expensive than silver. Therefore, silver jewelry with Rhodium plating is usually at least five cent more expensive per gram. Since Rhodium has the property of being highly tarnish resistant and very expensive at the same time, some manufacturers would coat the sterling silver jewelry with a thin layer of copper before plating the Rhodium to reduce the cost. It might be a good idea to ask the vendors if the Rhodium is plated directly or not because some people have skin type that would turn the copper underneath green.

Stone cutting

Sterling silver jewelry usually has natural or synthetic stones set on it. The cutting of the stones, even with the same size, might affect the cost. For instance, the synthetic diamond cubic zirconia stones would cost more if they are in princess cut as suppose to round brilliant cut. Furthermore, emerald cut and baguette cut stones are even more expensive than princess cut ones.

Stone setting

1. The way that stones are set on a piece of jewelry also affects the cost. Many pendant and bracelet styles employ an economical setting method called wax setting. The stones are not really set one by one on the jewelry. Rather, they are fixed on the mold before the jewelry is cast out from the melted silver and come out of the mold together with the silver. This lowers the cost of the silver jewelry significantly. However, the quality of the setting is not consistent and the heat of the silver in liquid form might affect the quality of the stones.

Besides wax setting, there are several hand-setting methods that are widely adopted. The most common one is prong setting, where the stones are held in place by three to eight prongs, depending on the style. More advanced settings include channel setting, bezel setting, pave setting and invisible setting. Understanding the labor costs involved in different kinds of settings is one of the keys to getting merchandize with the best prices.

Stamping and Casting

Another categorization for sterling silver jewelry is the way they manufacture the metal part. To save cost, some jewelry is made by stamping and cutting the needed shapes out from a large sheet of silver and than bend it into the desired shapes. On the other hand, a more traditional way of producing sterling silver jewelry is to cast the metal out of a mold, which is more labor intensive and hence more costly due to the polishing and filing required afterwards. The way the jewelry is made affects the durability a great deal and hence the success of your business.