Beaded Jewelry Design - Part 2: The Art of Selling

Beaded Jewelry Design - Part 2: The Art of Selling

Beaded jewelry design, like I wrote in a previous blog, is a popular choice for novices who want to go into the crowded but exciting field of fashion accessories, either for trade or personal creative pursuit. Creating beautiful pieces, if you want your new-found passion to be lucrative, is only half of the work.

With this article, I will be sharing my personal experiences about selling. There are people who can intrinsically sell anything even with eyes closed. I am not one of them. It is a cup of tea that comes bland in my taste buds. In the same way, there is a kind of fashion accessories that can practically sell itself. Mine get almost automatic complement... but not instant sales. I have long accepted the fact that the fashion jewelries I design don't fall under the mainstream category. Along the way though there have been surprises.

Look within the Circle

The first selling lesson is to look at your friends and identify who among them emit sales talk from their mouths like fire from a dragon's. I am certain that your good friends will be more than willing to help given two primary motivations: 1. friendship (what's in it for you) and/or 2. mark-up (what's in it for them). The first two fire-spitters with tremendous convincing power (a.k.a. "imposition") for me were real close friends of mine. One of them showed my first collection to a group of ladies who lunch, got a good small quantity of order and eventually clinched for me a consignment deal with a very popular boutique with branches in Glorietta and Trinoma. The other one dangled the necklaces to his agents at a call center along with regularization or perfectly timed the selling mission during agent evaluation. He sold to other team leaders and even his bosses. He created a devoted following like a small cult of addicts hungry and shivering for the next batch of desirable fashion jewelries.

Never Underestimate Bank Employees

My sister had been aware of my fashion jewelries for a long time before she decided to bring and show them to her officemates in a top bank. She didn't think they had either taste or budget for my fashion-forward and rather high-priced pieces... or so we both thought... but who can blame us? Just try to go in a bank and look at, say, the tellers behind the counter. Most of them either wear simple, almost inconspicuous fine jewelry or their closest version to fashion jewelry: faux pearl-beaded ID holders.

I was in for a big shock when my sister came home with quite a long, certainly unexpected list of orders. Not one of them asked for a discount, only installment payments which was to be expected. Whether you sell fashion jewelry or longanisa to any workplace, the payments come in on the 15th and end of the month.

I once went to that bank myself when my sister was too busy to entertain the regular buyers. Upon entering the room I heard three girls shrieked like movie fans seeing a movie star. I didn't realize how much excitement my creations stirred in these ladies! As I unloaded my sample cases one by one on the table inside a cubicle, the girls slowly started arriving from lunch break. One by one they came and before I knew it they were flocking like bees to honey. It was a telling sign of buying behavior. Girls like to compare and have fun and tell each other which one looks best on each other and laugh and have fun. Did I say they like to have fun?

Keep the selling style personalized as buyers really want a sense of ownership to what they buy. They ask how to wear the necklace or what sort of clothes it matches. They request you to lenghten or shorten it. Do you have it in another color? Filipina girls are huge devotees of the everything-should-match mindset. When you solve their problem for them - not just sell them your wares - they will keep on coming back. Being customer-friendly assures you of friendly customers.

The Value of Meet-ups

For sellers who don't have their own showroom or shop, meet-ups are one easy way to sell. You agree with the buyer on a place and time convenient to you both. Buyers like this set-up because it affords them a private viewing (yes, ironically even in a public place) of your collection. They feel a sense of exclusivity and privelege. For you, it can open more doors.

I once met up with a buyer in a coffee shop. Typically, I brought out my sample cases and laid them out on the table. It was evening and there was not much light. When you bring out accessories in a public place and your buyer tries them on, you will almost always get attention. True enough, the lady at the next table noticed, came over, asked if she could look at the samples, begged to buy one (prototypes were not for sale at that time), thought of introducing me to her friend who was a fashion accessory fanatic. That led me to sell to a very popular evening newscaster of a major network who wore my necklaces throughout the latter part of her pregnancy. After she gave birth and shed off the added pounds, I noticed she opted for simpler fine jewelry on the evening newscast. Maybe pregnant women tend to feel less attractive and fashion jewelry restores their confidence. Just a theory, of course.

The conventional methods of selling, needless to say, should by all means be taken advantage of. Where would all of us be without the proliferation of bazaars (not just during the holiday season but all-year-round now) and the easy access to the wonderful world wide web? Bazaars are organized left and right. For first-timers it is advisable to join tried-and-tested bazaars that you yourself frequent as a buyer. Make sure to register early to secure a good spot. Front rows just after the entrance are not necessarily where buyers go to first. From experience I have discovered that traffic is usually heavy in the middle part of the venue.

There are several sites where you can let people know about your product and sell to them - http://www.multiply.com/ is a very popular selling site for many local small-scale designers, manufacturers and traders. Make sure you choose an attractive default design format the site offers to represent your company or the theme of your collection. You can also create your own webpage design. The photos of your products must be well lighted, clear and artistically-shot as they are a major basis of your buyer's decision to buy. Also write a good text which your reader can enjoy and give the impression that you care for and take seriously what you do. Check out my own site http://cerashop.multiply.com/ and take a look at the creations I have made throughout my company's short existense thus far.

With this bunch of tips, I hope I have given you ideas on how to sell your fashion accessories in this series on beaded jewelry design.