Joanne Varney gives her tips and ideas to help maximise your sales this Valentines. She holds a BA (Hons) in Jewellery and Silversmithing and is part of the Cooksongold Team.

Valentine’s Day is upon us and represents one of the few sales opportunities during the early part of the year. With jewellery being an obvious choice, here are a few ideas to help maximise your sales and to guide those uncertain male customers!!

‘Love Tokens’ –  Gift Vouchers are a great option for those who are uncertain of their partners taste, but can sometimes come across as a little lacking in imagination. However, dress a gift token into something a little more interesting e.g. ‘Love Token’, couple this idea with an attractive card and I think you will provide a useful option for many shoppers. After all, many people may know their partners favourite designer, but may not be able to choose one piece. This is the perfect solution.

Sales Incentives – Just because most of us run small scale operations doesn’t mean we can’t make use of some of the sales incentives used by the large companies. For example, try offering a free gift wrapping service. It’s surprising just how many customers (especially men) will take advantage of this, particularly those shopping at the last minute. Offer a free Valentine’s Day card with every sale in the 2 weeks prior to the big day. Again it’s taking the hassle out of shopping for people and saving them a trip to an overcrowded card shop. Yes it means a small outlay but this could be minimised by designing and printing the cards yourself. Finally a 10% discount off of the next purchase is always well received and brings customers back to you helping to build a relationship of trust.

Although Valentine’s Day is traditionally a day for proposing, most customers won’t be looking for rings. In fact many men would avoid buying them on principle in case their partner was to get the wrong idea!! For the most part it is preferable to steer customers in the direction of items which don’t need sizing. Earrings and pendants are fairly safe options, but offer a longer length chain. (You don’t want disgruntled ladies returning pendants because the chain was too short!)

Charms – Charms make a perfect Valentine’s Day gift for both men and women. They don’t need sizing, can be attached to bracelets or necklets and best of all they can reflect any occasion, hobby or interest you can possibly imagine. Hearts are an obvious and popular choice and can be simply made using either wire or sheet.  Add interest with different textures and finishes and hang together in groups of three with perhaps a Swarovski Heart crystal to create a great cost effective gift. They will work out more inexpensive than other branded alternatives and suit more customers’ pockets.

On that subject I would just like to reiterate a point that I’ve made in previous articles. Make sure you have items at a good range of price points, low to high, to suit all budgets.  Ensure your cheaper items are easy to get to so as not to put people off and perhaps most important of all, smile and try to encourage customers to be romantic!

And if for some reason you are not feeling the romance of the occasion, grit your teeth and pretend!!

Happy Valentine’s Day xx

Joanne Varney gives her tips on how to kick start a new range. She holds a BA (Hons) in Jewellery and Silversmithing and is part of the Cooksongold team.

The sky is dark, it’s pouring with rain and the wind is whistling down the chimney. It’s the start of a New Year and time to think about the months ahead and what you intend to achieve in them. If, like many others you are feeling a bit flat and uninspired after the retail buzz of Christmas, don’t despair.  Over the next few paragraphs I’m going to share with you a few tips I use to kick start my design ideas when inspiration is a little short in supply.

Ideas Book – Many of you probably keep one of these as standard but for those who don’t, this is simply a notebook or box where you can store your sources of inspiration as you find them. These can be in almost any form from magazine cuttings and photos to found objects such as leaves and stones.  It’s great to keep these items in one place so that when you’re ready you can quickly refer back to a previous idea and start to expand upon it in the form of a mood board or sketch book.

Colour – Colour can be a great starting point for a new range as it can be evocative of so many different things.  For example if you are drawn to cool blue tones, what images do they conjure up? Today, if I think of blue tones, I think of clear blue skies and warm seas which in turn lead on to soft fluid images of ripples, waves and clouds. By this point I am already thinking of smooth, rounded shapes in cool silver tones, so very quickly, as a jeweller, I have converted those initial thoughts into the beginnings of a new range. This of course is only a simple illustration of how to get started and in practise far more consideration and research would be given to each stage, but you can see how easily colour can be a terrific trigger for new design ideas.

Texture – Texture can very easily be transformed into fantastic pieces of jewellery once it has been captured in metal. This can be achieved relatively quickly by casting direct from the object using either PMC or plaster of paris and then wax to make a mould. (If you are lucky enough to own a rolling mill, varying textures can be rolled onto metal, providing the objects used won’t damage the rollers) I’ve had some fantastic results in the past using objects as mundane as household tin foil. Once crumpled up it takes on an interesting texture which I captured using molten wax. I then got the wax cast into metal which I cut into simple shapes to make a selection of pieces. I have also used stone and miniature tyres from a toy car both of which worked really well.

Form – Perhaps the most obvious source of inspiration, form can be taken from absolutely anywhere be it natural or manmade. Whether you choose a literal or abstract interpretation, the key to success is in how you bring that form together into a piece.  I have found that looking at things with a restricted or distorted view can bring some interesting results. For example, just by cutting a hole in a piece of paper and placing it over a drawing, you will be able to look at the image differently, perhaps picking up new details that might otherwise have been missed.  Distortion can also give some great results, try looking at objects through patterned glass or even through a mass of bubbles and you will soon have some fascinating new imagery to work with.

Working as a designer/maker can sometimes be a lonely and difficult experience especially when you’re stuck for ideas. Learning to become resourceful using the objects around you is a great skill to have and will help you through those inevitable periods when the designs just won’t come.