What do you do when something you’ve made doesn’t sell?
I mean, besides cry, rant, and/or feel sorry for yourself?
If you're new to selling your handmade jewelry, it might make you feel a little better to know that it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been selling your work, you’re going to run into the problem of unsold inventory at some point.
How long should you wait?
Every once in awhile I’ll post a new jewelry design and it will sell the same day. Sometimes within hours. (And yes, that's always amazing the few times it happens!) More often, it may take weeks or months for a particular jewelry design to sell. I’ve renewed some pieces for as long as a year online before they sell, but every business owner is different. If I’ve made the commitment to sell a design online with photos, descriptions, and keywords, then I’m generally willing to be generous with the time it may take to find the right home.
After 3-4 Months
For my Etsy shop, I find that when an item expires after four months, it’s a good time to see if I can make any minor changes before relisting it again. Brick-and-mortar shops often want quarterly updates, too, so the change of seasons can be a good prompt to revisit your work. Here are the two tasks I typically try for jewelry sold online:
Tweak the listing
Do I need better photos, search terms, or descriptions? If I’m not getting any views, then likely both my search terms and/or photos need work.
If people are clicking but not buying, then I look at the description. Am I missing any key information such as the type of material used for the ear wires or the length of the necklace? Sure, potential customers may write and ask about missing info, but more likely, they might move onto another seller with more complete information.
Have I shared the story of my inspiration behind this necklace? Or have I given the potential customer ideas on how this bracelet might fit into their life? For example, is it a great gift for a music teacher or a fun accessory for the weekend?
Price might also come into play here, but in general, it’s been my experience that price is not usually the main issue.
Promote it
People need to know about it to buy it. Have I mentioned this piece of jewelry everywhere I can think of? Did I spread out the mentions over several months or did I do it all in the span of one hour on a random Tuesday? Did I link my mentions to a specific holiday or customer group? Did I tell an interesting story about it? Is the right audience seeing it?
More Than a Year
If it’s been a year and it’s still not sold, then I put it aside. Usually every summer when it’s a little less hectic, I’ll review these necklaces, bracelets, and earrings and decide what to do with each one. Here are my common decisions:
Sell it elsewhere
It’s fascinating to me that there is a big difference in the online and in-person shopper. I have found that just by offering the item in a different venue, it often sells. With jewelry especially, some pieces need to be handled or tried on in order to make a sale. Some items like long necklaces are especially hard to photograph well. Bracelets can also be tricky to sell online since they require more of a precise fit. It's quite possible that just by offering your work to a different audience it will quickly find a home.
Hold a sale
Discounts can be enticing to certain shoppers, so consider whether having a sale would work for you. I hold an annual July sale for my newsletter subscribers as a way to thank them for their support and clear out inventory. Knowing that I have this regular sale in my calendar helps me plan.
Give it away
By give away, I’m talking gifts to family and friends or your favorite charities. (A complete stranger asking me to send them a piece for free – it does happen, believe it or not – will get a polite no.) For example, I’ve mentioned Ears To You as a charity for donated earrings in previous blog posts. Sometimes there will be a specific event coming up and your item might be perfect for a fundraiser.
Family and friends can be tricky. You don’t want it to seem like you’re gifting your leftovers. (Who wants to hear, “It’s not good enough to sell, but it’s good enough for you”?) So if I’m going to do this, then I think hard about whether it’s the type of item I might have made for them anyway as a birthday gift. Does it match their personal style? Have previous handmade jewelry gifts been well received (and worn)?
I'll be donating this mixed media barrette I made to a resale shop. It doesn't fit the aesthetic of my current shop and is too complex to easily dismantle for parts.
This sweet flower necklace is another potential candidate for giving away. It's well made, just not a fit for what is currently selling. The silver chain is a bit tarnished, so I'd need to polish it before gifting it.
List it later
Sometimes I take pieces off the site and relist them later. This is especially true for anything seasonal. Sure, some people might buy a piece of Christmas jewelry in April, but you may be better off relisting it during the season when the odds are in your favor. If I’m going to do this, I always check the workmanship to make sure that the piece is in excellent condition. If it just needs polishing, that's a quick fix, but if it needs extensive work then I won’t relist it as is. (If you're an economics nerd, you might recognize the trap of the sunk cost fallacy where you are investing too much time or energy in a piece that will never bring a return.) I also check to make sure it fits my current design aesthetic. Ideally, I’d like it to be difficult for a customer to pick out which pieces are old or new.
I made these glass leaf earrings in 2014/2015 and decided to relist them this year with new sterling silver findings. They were only in my shop for a few months the first time and were not promoted. I took new photos and hope that they'll sell this year.
Remake it
Remaking items has often worked for me. For example, I've turned unsold earrings into pendant necklaces. The key here is how easy and quick is it to do? If something has been glued or riveted securely (like the barrette shown earlier) that’s not as easy as switching ear wires or changing out the clasp.
This sterling silver bird still fits with my overall aesthetic, but at the moment I can only find the one earring. If I can’t find the other one, I’ll probably remake the earring into a simple necklace.
Take it apart
Sometimes the parts might be more valuable than the whole. Maybe you want to sell the beads or set them aside for a future piece. I find this is the direction I lean if I’m using expensive materials such as sterling silver or artist-made components that I still love.
When I first started selling my jewelry, I listed a lot of Christmas jewelry items, but they just didn’t sell that well for me. This isn’t to say that there is not a market for holiday jewelry, there’s just not a market for me. Watch faces can be pricey, so I will probably dismantle this beaded watch and reuse the parts.
These are some of the newly disassembled jewelry parts waiting to be used for something else.
Keep it
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but quite a few pieces of jewelry that I wear regularly are ones that did not sell. If I love it, I might just decide to keep it for myself. And oddly enough, once I’m wearing the piece out in the world, I often get asked about it. And sometimes someone will even want to buy it. Which leads to my very last tip:
Wear it while grocery shopping
Back when I was the editor of Beading Daily, I asked readers about selling their work and waaaayyy more people than you'd expect sold a lot of their jewelry just this way. So, go on, wear those huge crystal chandeliers and pearl choker while picking out some canned tomatoes and boxes of Shredded Wheat. What do you have to lose?