How to Keep Your Jewelry Business Afloat During A Recession

During these uncertain times, many industries are feeling the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and jewelry is no exception. It can be hard to keep your head above the water when you’re reliant on a steady stream of customers walking through the door. We’ve compiled a quick list of things to do in order for you to keep running your jewelry business in a safe and sustainable manner.

4 Things to Do as a Jewelry Business During the Pandemic

1. Update Your Clients on Your Current Situation

As jewelry businesses are hit, they're temporarily closing left and right, or modifying their structure to work with the coronavirus shutdown. It’s important to keep your clients up to date on what you’re doing specifically via email or social media. Most companies are now reassuring clients that they’re keeping things sanitary and in-line with CDC guidelines. Some jewelers have offered great tips on how they’ve been receiving and shipping out jewelry by cleaning packages with Clorox, dunking items into alcohol, and steam cleaning everything to sterilize the metal. If you’re keeping your staff to a minimum in accordance with social distancing, mention that as well to give your clients peace of mind, as a skeleton crew reduces the possibility of contamination.
It’s not enough to just mention your sanitation process, however; if you want to keep things running, you’ll also have to provide more information on how you’re running your business at this time. Make sure to mention your hours of operation if your shop is open, how to pick up jewelry and/or make payments, and turnaround times for any repairs or orders. By proactively providing customers with this information, you’re already taking the first step to ensure that business is still coming in by letting them know how you’re still going about your work.
Not all of your customers might be tech-savvy, so it’s also a good idea to go through your client book and call up good old-time customers to inform them how you’re running shop. That’ll cover your bases when it comes to keeping everyone updated, and also provide you with some word-of-mouth marketing. 

2. Offer Special Appointments

For businesses reliant on walk-in customers, some clients may feel safer about coming in if you mention that you’re scheduling one-on-one appointments instead of just opening shop to the public as usual. This ensures that they come into less contact with other people, and keeps business running. If they’re still uncertain about coming in, you can schedule consultations by phone, video call, or texting, and figure out how your client can browse through products, place orders, and receive items in a way that will keep them comfortable. 

3. Go Online

In this day and age, it’s rare for jewelry shops to not have some form of ecommerce site. If you’ve been really dependent on local business, this is a way to continue bringing in money by increasing your visibility online. For a long-term business strategy, consider using Shopify to get started on creating your own site and building your online presence. As another alternative, it’s easy to set up an account on platforms such as Etsy and Rubylane, and they’ll allow you to reach a wider audience of people who are probably at home, browsing online while under quarantine. Make sure to set up and link via platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, both of which have product linking capabilities to reach a wider audience of customers.
Whether it’s through email, social media, or search, you’ll also need people to notice you if you’re online. Mention to your customers in your update email that you’ve moved operations onto your site, and provide them with the link so that they can easily access your products and services. If you’re fully set up, you can look into offering discounted or free shipping, which is always a great incentive to increase online sales as people stay at home. You can also offer additional options such as expedited shipping or signature required, for people who need items right away.

4. Stay Positive and Focus on ROI

It’s easy to slip into panic mode with everything that’s going on right now, but keep in mind that having a doom-and-gloom outlook gets you nowhere. It’s best to maintain a level, ROI/profit-oriented mindset because your livelihood, and the livelihoods of the people who either work for you or work around you depend on this mentality. You can still make profit by finding that correct balance between providing good value and expressing care towards your customers. Whether it’s by having a salesperson reach out to customers by calling them all up, or a jeweler selling scrap and old inventory to convert to cash, everyone can chip in just a little (which adds up to a whole lot of effort!)
Don’t forget to look internally into parts of your jewelry business that can be cut down to reduce expenses and maximize cost-effectiveness. As an example, if you rarely deal with platinum items, and you have a small profit margin on those when it comes to repairs, don’t continue to buy solder and wire for it. On the front side, provide sales and offer discounts; any bit of incentive to bring in customers as usual will keep business alive, and that’s the most important thing to do right now during this time. As a quick guide, here are a few other things you can consider doing below:

7 Tasks to Keep You Busy: 

1. Catch up on administration/finance/ other things you kept putting aside.
2. Set aside time to explore your creative side and brainstorm ideas for your business or life in general.
3. Do something new, such as learning a new skill or listening to a new business podcast.
4. Allow yourself to relax and meditate – whether it be for 1 minute or 1 hour- this will help to relieve stress.
5. Plan for the future. Write some new goals that you would like to achieve- include both short and long term goals. This will include for the short term, while you are still in quarantine, and what you need to do once life goes back to normal in order to achieve your long term goals!
6. Keep in touch with your current vendors and clients.
7. Engage and explore the competition to have a better knowledge of who else is out there and can augment your business.

We hope that we’ve been able to provide you with some help to weather out this storm. Jewelry businesses all over the world are suffering from this pandemic, and doing every little bit to stay afloat will help you, your workers, and your coworkers to financially endure throughout the pandemic. Our best thoughts are with all of you, and to everyone affected by this worldwide crisis.