Click for the mini-tutorial.
If you buy gently-used costume jewelry outright from your suppliers, include in the batch offer, and also save, ALL bits and pieces.
You can make these bookmarks for gifts to family and customers. This is also a wonderful craft for NFP thrift shops to suggest to folks who want to volunteer, but not as sales or store staff. Supply the materials and instructions, and you’ll end up with a “Locally-Made Craft” to market in your shop or on your site and blog.
At the VERY least, you can
package up bits&pieces for your crafty clientele
if you aren’t interested in doing crafts yourself. I did this every year at our summer sidewalk sale, and it was the first area to be sold out. Clear baggies of “natural”, “bold”, “metallic” parts for $2-$10.
You can also, of course, tell your customers you’ll find a good use for it before they trash their broken costume jewelry, and they’ll be happy to pass it on to you.
RE-inforces your shop branding of recycling, reusing!
You could even donate broken bits to some non-profit’s craft project. The 11-year-olds in our city’s free summer camp made terrific “treasure boxes” one year out of what I’d kept rather than throwing away.
Do you buy gently–used costume jewelry from your consignors or sellers? Or rely on new, wholesale jewelry? Or is jewelry not a big seller in your shop? Share in the comments, if you wish.
Photo from Country Living..
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
[…] Another way to use bits-n-pieces. […]
Kate, thanks for the suggestions ~ We are just starting to carry jewelry so I’m sure my process will continue to grow and change. I may very well decide to buy outright from consignors in the future, or maybe just invite some of our best consignors to bring things in, you know, the ones we love to see pull into the driveway? Frankly, I tried it a few times with people who approached me before we were even displaying any jewelry and they weren’t happy with my price (this is for costume jewelry too – not precious metals). I may just need to continue to refine my pricing and also be prepared to lose a few. I like the idea of a bulk offer, in other words, not breaking the offer down piece by piece; but a people seem to want to pull things apart and discuss what each darn little thing is worth.
BTW: I do LOVE the Charles Albert line. I carry some cheaper versions of that style but yes, they are prob. too pricey for now. Sigh, maybe one day!
Thanks, Jenni, for answering my Q about why you seek new jewelry wholesalers rather than buying from your consignors. Your feeling that you could work on refining your monetary offers to be less contentious gives me some good insight into challenges faced by not just you, but the “average” consignment shopkeeper wanting to branch out into a little buying outright. (Not that there’s ANYthing average about you, of course… and there’s probably nothing such as an “average” resale shopkeeper either!)
I am interested to know if anyone has a good wholesale company to work with. It seems like a big secret, maybe rightly so… I think jewelry would do well in our shop but I’m not ready to buy outright from consignors.
You can email me if you don’t want to post online for all to see: Jeddies@aol.com
Thanks!
Hi Jenni, I assume you’ve checked out all the possibilities on the TGtbT.com Links Page at http://tgtbt.com/links.htm And on our Womenswear page there’s many links to wholesale shopping districts and trade shows and publications under “Wholesale Shoppin’ FOOL!” at http://tgtbt.com/womenswear.htm
Also, researching you, I see that you are in Florida, so you might look into going to the Atlanta Mart, and I believe there’s one in Miami as well. Then there’s the NARTS affiliate members who wholesale jewelry (many consignment shops swear by Charles Albert, but his stuff may be more high-end than you’re ready to invest in to start.)
Just a nosy question: why are you ready to buy wholesale, but not from your consignors? I’m curious as to your thinking.