Hi guys,
Apologies in advance if this is not the right forum…
I was looking for some tips / advice on starting a pearl retail business. I know that many of the members here are also sellers and it's understandable if you need to protect business knowledge, but I am in a region of the world that I believe you don't really serve, and I will never be able to reach your scale.
I quit a bad job earlier this year and want to take a rest for a while. I've been toying with the idea of opening a very, very small online retail business and I love looking at pearls, especially akoya, so I thought I could put all that time gazing at pearls to good use.
I plan to sell only PSL-certified hanadama akoya sets, maybe branching out later into other akoya-based jewelry. Prior to the pandemic, I would visit Hong Kong and Japan fairly often. The last time I visited Japan, I bought an additional set of hanadama akoya that I decided I didn't want and sold it off, so I have an inkling of possible margins here.
Other than a potential website, I have noticed other pearl sellers in my areas using a free platform, which keeps marketing costs down. Of course, there wouldn't be huge volume, but I don't expect to sell more than 1 or 2 sets a month and would not keep a large inventory
I use that platform to buy and sell my own personal possessions quite a bit. There are a lot of sellers offering tahitian, SSP and akoya - ranging from dubious / downright misclassified specimens to what looks like decent quality pearls. But very few of them offer hanadama akoya. Few of them bother with PSL certifications at all. Most resort to saying "AAA" with the occasional (dubious) claim of Tennyo. Yet people are still buying them. And I don't even want to get started on retail brick and mortar stores and the quality they carry.
Additionally, I personally realised that I need to view pearls in person before I can buy them without regrets, and there is lack of cheap and easy ways for someone in my country to view good quality hanadama pearls in person before purchasing them.
Just some questions to the retailers:
How do you deal with returns?
For smaller retailers, do you still buy akoya at auction / from source and then match and grade them, before sending them to PSL, or do you choose hanadama strands from middlemen?
For smaller retailers, how do you get to pearl auctions / get the suppliers closer to the source to talk to you? What is the minimum quantity / monetary quantum of sales you have to hit before they will entertain you?
Do you have any further tips for how to educate myself? I've done the Pearls as One course before, but am curious about resources meant for industry professionals.
Apologies in advance if this is not the right forum…
I was looking for some tips / advice on starting a pearl retail business. I know that many of the members here are also sellers and it's understandable if you need to protect business knowledge, but I am in a region of the world that I believe you don't really serve, and I will never be able to reach your scale.
I quit a bad job earlier this year and want to take a rest for a while. I've been toying with the idea of opening a very, very small online retail business and I love looking at pearls, especially akoya, so I thought I could put all that time gazing at pearls to good use.
I plan to sell only PSL-certified hanadama akoya sets, maybe branching out later into other akoya-based jewelry. Prior to the pandemic, I would visit Hong Kong and Japan fairly often. The last time I visited Japan, I bought an additional set of hanadama akoya that I decided I didn't want and sold it off, so I have an inkling of possible margins here.
Other than a potential website, I have noticed other pearl sellers in my areas using a free platform, which keeps marketing costs down. Of course, there wouldn't be huge volume, but I don't expect to sell more than 1 or 2 sets a month and would not keep a large inventory
I use that platform to buy and sell my own personal possessions quite a bit. There are a lot of sellers offering tahitian, SSP and akoya - ranging from dubious / downright misclassified specimens to what looks like decent quality pearls. But very few of them offer hanadama akoya. Few of them bother with PSL certifications at all. Most resort to saying "AAA" with the occasional (dubious) claim of Tennyo. Yet people are still buying them. And I don't even want to get started on retail brick and mortar stores and the quality they carry.
Additionally, I personally realised that I need to view pearls in person before I can buy them without regrets, and there is lack of cheap and easy ways for someone in my country to view good quality hanadama pearls in person before purchasing them.
Just some questions to the retailers:
How do you deal with returns?
- Hygiene: Many jewelry retailers do not allow for earrings to be tried on. Do you adopt a similar approach? What if a customer tries on an item of jewelry and gets it really dirty, which might potentially damage the quality of the pearls? Where do you draw the line?
- Fraud: Pearls can be difficult to distinguish for the layman. I'm afraid of the classic bait & switch scam - I'm sure I'll be able to recognise if they had swapped it for a lower quality, but not sure how I might potentially prove it in a court. When I was selling off my designer bags, someone tried this on me, but designer bags have serial numbers and so I could send her packing
For smaller retailers, do you still buy akoya at auction / from source and then match and grade them, before sending them to PSL, or do you choose hanadama strands from middlemen?
For smaller retailers, how do you get to pearl auctions / get the suppliers closer to the source to talk to you? What is the minimum quantity / monetary quantum of sales you have to hit before they will entertain you?
Do you have any further tips for how to educate myself? I've done the Pearls as One course before, but am curious about resources meant for industry professionals.
- Is the GIA pearl course very useful or are there book resources etc that are helpful? Does it help to open doors to industry sources?
- I saw that Jeremy has written a book on starting an online business; but from the preview on Amazon it seems to be geared towards the business side of things rather than being about pearls. Are there any books you can recommend for further knowledge?
- Also saw that Pearl Dreams recommended "Pearl Buying Guide" by Renee Newman