Jewellery selling

[word_of_mouth_jewels]

Hi I have been selling on eBay for over 2 years, since I moved here from Canada. It was slow at first since I had to build trust but I have always had happy customers and no issues or cases against me. I had one return once but it was over a typo, I wrote 19inches but meant 19cm for a bracelet and the buyer returned it and I paid her back BEFORE I even got the item in the mail, jsut to make sure that she would be satisfied with how the sale went etc. I always get the nicest emails and calls from my customers once they receive their items they always seem genuinely thrilled which is ofcourse pretty rewarding.

Ok so with all this said my sales have gone from brisk to non existant in the past 2 months, my prices have not changed or the items I sell, I am sort of stumped. I know the economy is bad but shouldnt that mean more people would be coming to alternative sales sites like eBay and Etsy for mroe expensive items? Just wondering if anyone else is seeing this as well. The weird thing is my sales outside of eBay have not nosedived, they have been steady if not increasing... This is what makes me wonder if it is eBay specific. I am jsut wondering if it is worth it to keep paying auctiva fees and ebay fees and posting listings if this is commonplace now.

I need to be clear, I have no watchers, no emails, no offers, and if I do get an offer it is a fake offers - those would be offers 1/3 - 18th of my asking price.

Any help would be much, much appreciated!

[gemsttonepette]

So what are you telling me? That every sapphire, ruby, emerald and diamond that is in a piece from USA is muddy and low quality? I am sure they will be glad to know that.

The first time I ever saw low end American jewellery I was absolutely aghast at the quality. Or rather, the lack of quality.

That was years ago & since then, the jewellery chain stores here have gone one better with all their precious gemstones being created.

But yes Rabbit, the stones being referred to in their cheap end are just awful. I can't see they have improved their offering in the meantime & I doubt the target market for that stuff would know any better. They sure don't know any better here.

[word_of_mouth_jewels]

Thanks for visiting my site! Sorry you did not find what you were looking for...I sell a wide range of items, I have over 100 items in stock at the moment, and as you can see I sell items at all price ranges. I sell jewellery, as I mentioned, so I can stay at home with my 11 month old daughter and 3 year old son and so far I have not had to go back to work since my son was born in June of 2009 so I consider that a success. It would have been nice to be able to do that and make you happy but if I only can settle for one of the two I am ok with it being the former not the latter.

[dylan11235813]

How do you test the quality of a gemstone, is it just general appearence (like cracks, inclusions, ect..) and is it easy to spot "fake" stuff. Is it possable to measure the spectrum of the reflected light from gemstones to test them? Kind of like what they do in the movies when they hold them up to the light.

a mil is 1000th of an inch....

[rabbitearbandicoot]

Thanks for visiting my site! Sorry you did not find what you were looking for...I sell a wide range of items, I have over 100 items in stock at the moment, and as you can see I sell items at all price ranges. I sell jewellery, as I mentioned, so I can stay at home with my 11 month old daughter and 3 year old son and so far I have not had to go back to work since my son was born in June of 2009 so I consider that a success. It would have been nice to be able to do that and make you happy but if I only can settle for one of the two I am ok with it being the former not the latter.

On the contrary, I did find what I was looking for. You very politely informed me that you were not interested in selling low quality mass produced items .... and, there they are on your website in all their glory.

I don't care what you sell, but please don't be a hypocrite and say you don't sell the stuff when you obviously DO.

I congratulate you on your ability to work from home and make a living and believe me, I am happy that you are happy.:-x

[gemsttonepette]

To the OP, ask your valuer (not evaluator, is that a Canadian term?) to change his mark-up for you & to reprint all your Valuations out with the higher price.

At a quick glance, the valued prices are too low. And you make too much of a fuss about how he's GIA trained & how a 1 carat Tennis Bracelet would never be $5000, etc. Who says it can't be 5K? If there's enough gold in it, it can be a lot higher.

And did it not occur to you that the average buyer wants the Valuation as high as possible because when they buy something, they want the illusion of the best deal. i.e. the more saving, the bigger bargain.

With estate & vintage pieces of jewellery, customers in Oz are used to seeing this stuff marked up. Some of the prices asked for in Antique shops is unreal. You are not helping yourself by trying to downgrade the valuation of your merchandise. It isn't as if you are trying to sell it for that.

Your valuer only needs to enter the new price or the mark-up he calculates his final price on into his saved valuations. He may charge want to you for some materials but it is no big deal for him if he wants to keep your business.

And you can save a lot of the wording in your listing, simpler & clearer is the way to go in my opinion. Too many people just won't read a long listing. Especially when they are browsing on their phone. I get asked all the time about stuff that is there in my listing.

I am not saying this will bring your business back, we are all suffering, including me. But it is a start. The other obvious point is you lack a critical mass of stock but if it has all stopped, I guess more won't help. Good luck with it.

[word_of_mouth_jewels]

My daighter is teething (always, she is always teething) and so this is going to be a long night.

Dylan,with diamonds it is easy to spot colour with the naked eye - if there is a yellow tinge or brown then it will be worth less 9even when you call them by a fancy name like chocolate or champagne LOL). Clarity is usually easy to spot with the naked eye and definetly with a loupe - black marks / spots or an overall cloudiness will bean significantly lower price tag, but with s13 (slightly included 3) the inclusions should not be visible to the naked eye and it only relaly affects the amount of sparkle, so if youa re trying to find a bargain that is a good clarity for that. To test if they are genuine, yes, you can test the light refraction, but I would leave it to the professionals, the liquid I use is really highly toxic and also the machine is expensive. A good evaluator can tell a genuine from a fake, even a good lab one, and should only charge between $60-$100 and it is well worth it on any expensive item. Good to note too that in some stones cloudiness is not necessarily a bad thing - some stones are so rare that finding perfectly clear ones is just not very likely at all. Rubies are like that to an extent and their brother by another mother sapphires as well. (same stone different colour). If you need a good appraiser the one I use is really really honest and he will tell you exactly what he is doing which is good if you want to learn more.

To the poster who said I should raise my evaluation prices, my appraiser would not go for it, I wouldnt either. Maybe it is a Canadian thing but I just think it is better to be honest. And my appraiser has a reputation independent of my business that he has to protect. I get what you are saying though - you are probably 100% right I just can't do it LOL.

Rabbit, lets agree to disagree. I am proud of what I sell and stand behind it, I give away anything that doesnt meet my standards to my facebook fans. COngratulations for going through every single item and finding handful that are more mainstream, in this economy tell me a seller who does not sell items in the $25 - $50 price point. But they are not fake, they are not plated and they are all very well made and pretty and reflect my point of view.  I never ever have returns, I never have negative feedback and I never have unhappy customers.Ever. I was saying I would not sell the gold and gemstone cookie cutter diamond and gemstone items you yourself were refering to and I dont. I got my answer and so I am going to sign off, I am sure you will find someone else to target jsut as soon as I am gone. I am sure a few people will check out my website based on your comments, and so thanks for the SEO boost. 😉

[*sparklz*]

I don't care what you sell, but please don't be a hypocrite and say you don't sell the stuff when you obviously DO.

YES you do or you would not have gone to the effort of looking them up and making the comments that you did.

[chuk_77]

i have a question...do rabbits have green eyes?

[gemsttonepette]

To the poster who said I should raise my evaluation prices, my appraiser would not go for it, I wouldnt either. Maybe it is a Canadian thing but I just think it is better to be honest. And my appraiser has a reputation independent of my business that he has to protect. I get what you are saying though - you are probably 100% right I just can't do it LOL.

I thought I might draw a reaction like that. My suggestion has nothing to do with how honest or ethical you or your valuer are. I have no doubt he does a very thorough job in calculating stone weights & qualities & the carat & weight of gold, etc.

And that part of his work is not up for discussion. What I do know from 35 years in the trade is that some valuers work on a higher mark-up, some not so much. And this mark-up needs to reflect the appropriate retail outlet that applies to this stock.

I will try to explain it with a specific example. Take an antique piece of period jewellery. The stones might be paste, the gold might not be gold at all but rolled gold. If the valuer applies the same standards to that as he does a piece bought from one of the jewellery chains, it isn't going to get a very high price attached to it. But because it might be 200 years old with wonderful provenance, it might be valued far higher than the same piece with real gold & diamonds.

Have you asked your valuer what mark-up he applies on your stock to arrive at his replacement retail cost? Valuers have different rates for different types of shops, as the rolled gold example shows. And some valuers have always been slow to adjust their retail mark-up to reflect the changing times. Plus the public don't understand there is a difference between valuers, they just want the biggest saving over the replacement price.

Most of the time they don't have a clue what something is worth but they sure love getting a bargain. And this isn't peculiar to Oz, Canadian shoppers wouldn't be that different.

I dealt with many valuers & I always knew where to take something depending on whether I wanted a high or low valuation. And often we would discuss what mark-up was appropriate for a specific piece. If we couldn't agree on the numbers, it was easier for me to take it to another valuer.

I do not see this as wrong, what is wrong is when a valuer is pressured into changing the clarity or colour of a diamond. Some things get said to close a sale that can come home to bite the seller later. And I know this comes up all the time from conversations I have with valuers. It's the same as comparing a GIA valuation to an EGL certificate. And when I started, there was a 5% premium attached to GIA, today it is more like 50%.

If your valuer doesn't want to give you his mark-up or it isn't sufficiently high enough, it is time you changed valuers. He can keep his reputation & you can send him postcards from Tahiti after you increase your sales by showing bigger savings. I say that with my tongue in my cheek but it's a tough market out there & you need to do what you can. Think of your kids. Cheers.

[rabbitearbandicoot]

First, please forgive the large post. I seem to be running low on posts so I thought I might combine a few responses.

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"Rabbit, lets agree to disagree."
** Please tell me again what are we agreeing to disagree on?

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"COngratulations for going through every single item and finding handful that are more mainstream."
** No, I didn't have to go through every single item. I just clicked on one of your sections and there they were. By the way, your budget stuff looks very similar to the stuff I used to buy from India, but I guess not! Also, some of yours is preloved? I think I still have a fair bit of that same stuff (in a cupboard somewhere) if you are interested.

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"In this economy tell me a seller who does not sell items in the $25 - $50 price point."
** Exactly. Everyone has to do it. Even the largest jewellery chains. Have I said otherwise? No.

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"But they are not fake, they are not plated and they are all very well made and pretty and reflect my point of view."
** So, you have established that from your valuer? It would sort of defeat the purpose to spend money on having them valued wouldn't it.

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"I never ever have returns, I never have negative feedback and I never have unhappy customers.Ever."
** Do you have another selling id on eBay? Because 81 feedbacks is not a lot to be able to say 'Never. Ever'.

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"I was saying I would not sell the gold and gemstone cookie cutter diamond and gemstone items you yourself were refering to and I dont."
** Can you please tell me where I said anything about that? What you said was that ALL 10k items were rubbish and that they ALL contain inferior stones. I dispute that. I also dispute your other statement that you do not sell 10k stuff. I just had another quick look at your website and lo and behold "This  
fantastic  genuine amethyst bracelet is set in solid 10ct yellow gold. The  21 oval cut amethysts are 4mm x 6mm with good colour and clarity. The bracelet is 18cm in length".

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"I am sure you will find someone else to target jsut as soon as I am gone."
** You are being unfair. I am not targetting you at all, I just joined into your conversation because 
the subject interests me.

word-of-mouth-jewels wrote:"I am sure a few people will check out my website based on your comments, and so thanks for the SEO boost. "
** But, isn't that why you posted in the first place? You mentioned your website methinks just for 
that purpose. Anyway, good luck with the whole enterprise.

** Are you sure you haven't posted before on these boards? Maybe under a different id or two?

On another matter, can you tell me your opinion on Quartz stones? eg Amethyst, Citrine, Rose Quartz, Smokey Quartz etc. What is your opinion on heat treatment of these stones to produce brighter or even different colour?
As you are probably already aware, natural Citrine is very rare (especially the darker, more expensive 
variety), and it is a fact that a lot of stones marketed as Citrine actually started life as Amethyst or even colourless quartz and are treated to bring out the colour - what is your opinion on that?
Can you or your evaluator tell the difference when presented with one of these stones? They are, when all is said and done, genuine quartz and they respond to tests as would a genuine citrine. Even the hydrothermal manufactured stones (of which there are MANY on the market) are essentially made of  
quartz, and they are MORE PERFECT than most natural stones - except the REALLY expensive ones..

Now, in answer to sparklez, No, I don't care what he/she sells. But when a person says one thing and does another it gets my goat alittle. I find it hypocritical to say in one breath, "I won't sell that 10k mass produced rubbish" and then lo and behold he/she IS SELLING THAT 10k mass produced rubbish.

chuk_77: Re green eyes. I assume you mean to imply that I might be jealous? I am NOT THE SLIGHTEST bit envious of another's sales. I DO however KNOW the wholesale jewellery business and I KNOW what the items word-of-mouth is selling cost at wholesale price - especially the low end stuff.