How to Turn Your Jewellery Hobby into a Thriving Business?

Indian jewellery is a part of our culture and upbringing. It is a custom to have at least one piece of precious stone jewellery in every household in our country. The Indian jewellery market is huge and worth around 6180 billion INR in 2021.

Given its integral part of Indian culture and huge market, it is the best business opportunity for someone who has a hobby of jewellery making or design. It can be done from home and managed remotely.

If you possess a hobby of collecting or designing jewellery, turn it into a thriving business through the following tips and steps. Our pointers for how to start a jewellery business will help you in a great way.

Conception, planning, design, and marketing of jewellery business

1. Deciding on interested category

To start a business in jewellery, you must know all the details about the jewellery, including its categories. It will help in deciding your customer category for the business. Categories could be fine, fashion, and other jewellery.

• Fashion jewellery

These jewels are made of base alloy metals, gold and silver plated, leather, and textiles. Sones used in making this jewellery are Swarovski crystals, zirconia, stones made of plastic.

Example: Ribbon choker with gold plated pendant

• Fine Jewellery

Fine jewellery is made of gold, silver, and other precious stones. These are made for luxurious occasions, weddings, and other special purposes. Fine jewels are comparatively strong, durable and retain their shine if kept with proper care.

Example: Gold earrings, platinum necklace, etc

• Other Jewellery

This category includes everything in between fine and fashion jewellery. It contains gems, wood, 3D printing, acrylic, and more. These are of the average range, and design is the unique selling point.

2. Customer segment

After deciding upon the category of your jewellery business, it's time to shortlist the niche audience. Business plan and marketing should be focussed on the target audience. Your target customer should be according to your design or design jewellery as per your selected audience.

Customer types vary according to age, area, family, and several other factors. In South Delhi's Defence Colony, consumers will have different choices and preferences than customers in South Delhi's Mohan Estate area.

3. Research on trend

A business has to be aware of recent trends and news in the respective domain. It is essential to remain relevant and change as per changing trends. To do so, subscribe to fashion magazines, read blogs on recent designs and demand, etc.

Keep yourself updated and ready for the next season's jewellery trends. You can also search on Google trends to see how a particular keyword is trending. It will help you in providing customised solutions to the clients.

4. Build your signature style

If you want to stand apart and excel in business, focus on making your identity. It will help in brand positioning and brand building. Research and develop some unique designs and include them in the jewellery design.

Take inspiration from entrepreneurs in the same industry who have done some excellent work previously. Understand their approach and build your own.

5. Branding and Marketing

You have decided on the customer segment, category, and researching keywords, and now it's time to do a marketing plan. A business without marketing is impossible to survive.

6. Online jewellery business store

Start with a basic online store with themes and design. Publish some jewellery options and insert a payment option. Several companies provide free-of-cost online stores for first-timers. If you are experienced and can spend some money, hire a designer for the logo, theme and make an online store.

Another option to open jewellery stores is on Instagram and a business page on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram combined have billions of members. These platforms have specific tools to target the customers as per demographic details, including gender, age, location, profession, etc.

7. Optimising the business page or online store

Only making a business page or store would not bring customers; you need to convey your brand message to the target audience effectively. For this, you need solid content for the brand message, story, and about the business.

Content should be short, concise, and relevant. The audience should be able to understand your communication easily, and there must be some appealing factors.

8. Branding and digital advertisement

To target the specific audience and market, use a major portion of the promotional budget on online advertisement. Run ad campaigns on Google network, Facebook, Instagram with desired filters and frequency.

Do a photoshoot of jewellery and post on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and other platforms with a link to your website.

For branding, conduct promotional activities incorporate parks, jewellery market, high-end societies for better impact.

9. Design and production

Along with marketing and branding, you should also focus on design and production arrangements for making an impressive statement of the jewellery brand. You can either hire staff for designing or outsource the design work to a manufacturer.

While hiring staff, you can use staff management apps such as Okstaff for tracking salary, leave, etc. You can also calculate payable and receivable from AI-enabled bahi khata apps such as OkCredit.

10. Options for designing jewellery

• 2D and 3D design software such as GIMP, Inkscape, DrawPlus, Photoshop, Pixlr, etc
• Software custom made for jewellery design such as Matrix, Rhinojewel, JewelCAD, etc
• Manual tools including sketch paper, templates, designing board, and others.

11. Production Methods

• Methods for fine art jewellery

Fine jewellery is hand-made, personalised jewels. Methods of making these depend upon material and design. Some of the methods are silver or goldsmithing, casting, 3D printing, laser cutting, weaving, gemstone setting, soldering, and many others.

For making these jewels, you need to have certification and training.

• Methods for fashion jewellery

Fashion jewellery is the assembling of various parts, including chains, pendants, beads, etc. It does not need training or certification. You need a couple of ingredients such as jewellery hammers, wire cutters, glue, etc.

If you want to learn the making of jewellery, you can join a government-approved jewellery design institute. You can also go through free online tutorials on YouTube and Vimeo. Employ jewellery business ideas with your unique designs and start a profitable business.

12. Billing and employee management

Last but not least, make a plan for billing and employee management. A basic idea of calculation will be beneficial to monitor and optimise expenses. Technologically advanced bahi khata apps such as OkCredit provide excellent solutions for maintaining a ledger where you can manage vendor payments, production expenses, etc.

You can also track salary, attendance through staff management apps such as OkStaff and avoid any errors in operation.

Conclusion

The most successful business happens when you enjoy doing it. In this case, you can do a thriving jewellery business out of your hobby of designing or collecting jewels. It could be of any type and category. To make it an impressive business, you need proper planning, dedication, understanding of methods of jewellery making, ingredients, types, etc. You need to know all details of the jewellery industry in order to excel as a businessperson.

Also read:

1) How to start a Jewellery store? Jewellery franchise in India
2) How To Promote My Online Jewellery Business?
3) Top 10 Business Ideas to Start at an Early Age
4) How to Start an Online Jewellery Business in India?
5) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

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FAQs

Q. Is there any license or certification required for the jewellery business in India?

Ans. If you are planning to sell Hallmarked jewellery, you will need a BIS license. For a license from BIS, there should be a shop or business premises. To get the license, you need to submit an application form with the required documents to the authority. After document and premises verification, BIS approves the application and issue a license on your business name.

Q. What are the prospects of doing the jewellery business in India?

Ans. India is the world's largest consumer of gold and other forms of jewellery. There are around five lakh businesses involved in the jewellery business; most of them are small ventures and shops.

If you start a jewellery business with proper planning and marketing strategy, you will profit from the business.

Q. How much investment is required for starting a jewellery business?

Ans. Investment depends upon the scale of the business. It will vary if you are starting a small neighbourhood shop or a big showroom. It also differs based on the area within the city, location, region, and religious factors.