Long time, no post! I took almost a year long hiatus from smithing to deal with some not so fun life stuff. I’ve been hitting the bench hard over the past couple months and it feels great! I’m experimenting a lot with my style, and I can’t get enough of squiggly and wavey motifs. I sawed the ring band out from silver sheet and got to stampin’. I want to make a million more bands like this ✨
Hello! I posted here awhile back when I first started my business about having higher priced items compared to other vendors at the markets I was going to. I’m a silversmith and I work exclusively with sterling silver.
I know the economy is rough at the moment and silver has more than doubled in price since my last post. I’ve been trying to have items at different price points, but I can’t seem to sell even my lowest cost items at markets. I’m wondering what the issue is or if I’m doing something wrong. I’ve done four markets over the last 6 weeks and have had only one decently successful one.
I love making big statement pieces of course, but I also have stud earrings that I sell for $35 a pair or two pairs for $60. I have some tiny pendants on slim chains for $50-$60. I have some simpler rings that I sell for $55-$65. I tried making more styles of rings, but with the cost of silver, they ended up needing to be priced way higher than I anticipated — like $75-$95.
I know these prices are still not really in impulse purchase territory the way a $10 item would be, but even with my studs, I have never sold a single pair of them lol. Even when they were priced at $20 when the cost of silver was much lower.
I got some advice that I should apply to higher end juried art shows, which I’m looking into and definitely going to focus more of my energy on. I will say though, my booth display is very loud and colorful and I’m not sure how it’ll fare with a higher end show. I get a lot of compliments on my display, but I spoke to a professional painter who regularly does shows in that realm and she roasted me for my booth set up and said it looks cheap. She suggested that I make it as plain as possible and stick to black, beige, or white. That’s fair and I understand. I just put a lot of work into upgrading my set up recently and I feel a little discouraged feeling like I need to redo it all over again just to make it black and boring. I probably should’ve been more strategic beforehand, but what can you do.
Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions or advice. Or if there are any other jewelry people here who have dealt with a similar issue and how they’ve navigated it.
Edited to add: thank you so much for the feedback everyone! I’m going to see how I can post some pictures and hopefully that’ll help. Appreciate everyone’s willingness to help me out.
I wanted to add some things too. Those prices I listed are the cheapest things I sell. The majority of my pieces are larger statement pieces. I have huge hoops in the $250 range and they have stones and lots of embellishments. Statement necklaces are $300+ ish. Statement rings with more embellishments are $200-$300. I have these really fantastic chandelier statement earrings that have been the star of the show at all the markets I’ve been to. People really love them. But they’re $650 😂 I don’t expect to sell pieces in this price range at markets, but I always display all my more elaborate pieces to show people what I’m capable of. I was hoping that the big pieces would sell the smaller pieces too, and sometimes they do, but not to the extent I thought they would.
I’m working on a link now with pics and I’ll be back with that soon!
Edits part 2: I have a link! I made a dropbox folder with pics of my work, prices, and my booth set up. I hope that works. Let me know if anyone has a hard time opening it or if there’s a better way to include pics (I’m on my phone).