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Thread: Opening my new Etsy shop

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
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    Finland
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    €0.35 per stone for setting
    How does your stone setter survive on that if taking sufficient time to do decent work?
    I don't think your prices are too high at all, unfortunately you can't produce decent work cheaply in Europe & make sufficient profit...
    To be honest, is making €15 on an item worth the effort?

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
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    1,086

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    My advice would be to scrap the Etsy and have an obviously Italian website with an English translation. use the cachet of Italian design to your advantage. Then people will understand items shipping from Italy so shipping will be more clear, language idiosyncrasies will be understood and you will not be swallowed up in the abyss which is a huge selling website. Initial set-up would be more expensive but you will have more control over your internet presence and then, once you start to see some sales, no Etsy taking a big cut. Marketing effort will probably be the same
    Author: Pearls A Practical Guide
    www.pearlsapractical.guide
    www.Pearlescence.co.uk

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    England
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    1,902

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    Hi Federico, I use Photoshop 7 for my photo filing and photo adjustments. To change your photo I used these parts of photoshop. To adjust an image, click Image - Adjustments - then use the Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation sections to adjust the photo to your desire. I do have a digital Nikon with a Micro Nikkor lens which I use for some photos, but I mostly I use my Panasonic Lumix FZ45 which has a Leica lens for photos and the quality is great.
    I took this photo with my Lumix FZ45.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    James

  4. #14
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Posts
    2,067

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    I don't know about the hallmarking, Im sure Steve will advise, if he doesn't see this perhaps start a new thread about it.

    I use the 'curves' function mostly for altering lighting on photos although I use Gimp rather than photoshop now as I would have had to pay several hundred pounds to have the new version of photoshop when I got a new Mac ( very annoying!).
    Gimp is free though and pretty good, just harder to navigate.

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
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    Just looking at your shop now and for some reason the stone colour options only come up in Italian so you may want to change that.
    Also I notice you only have one available at least on some items, you need to have more otherwise when you sell one you will have to relist the item and get charged a relisting fee.
    I realise you are probably trying to get across that they are handmade to order but it will cost you 20 cents every time that you don't otherwise need to pay and it all adds up.
    The problem really though is that you are competing on a global market with mass produced products so you need to stand out more as handmade I think.
    Maybe work on your designs to make them more unusual?
    Sorry I hope that doesn't come across as rude but its a tough market out there.

  6. #16
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
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    2,067

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    Also you should fill in your 'about' section, its particularly important with handmade items that people get to see who is making it and are able to read a little about you.
    Photos can be either yourself, your workers or just your workspace if you prefer but people often want to 'meet' you if you are offering handmade items.

  7. #17
    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    Scotland
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    3,392

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    Quote Originally Posted by pearlescence View Post
    My advice would be to scrap the Etsy and have an obviously Italian website with an English translation. use the cachet of Italian design to your advantage. Then people will understand items shipping from Italy so shipping will be more clear, language idiosyncrasies will be understood and you will not be swallowed up in the abyss which is a huge selling website. Initial set-up would be more expensive but you will have more control over your internet presence and then, once you start to see some sales, no Etsy taking a big cut. Marketing effort will probably be the same
    I agree with Pearl. I don't think this is the market for you and a lot is being made of the language idiosyncrasies. You are after all selling from another country and that should be an advantage and not a hindrance

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Central London
    Posts
    8,845

    Default Hallmark Guidance.

    I have not found a way to post the whole of the hallmark guidance leaflet here, as the file is too large. However here are the relevant excerpts.

    I think it is logical therefore to assume that imported items are not exempt. Dennis.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Hallmark Exemptions 1..jpg   Hallmark Exemptions 2..jpg   Hallmark Exemptions 3..jpg  

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Posts
    13

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    Thanks again for all your help and your interest. I understand that probably my English is not written as a mothertongue english man would, so I'll ask my girlfriend (who has studied languages) to do a proper translation. I graduated in a science-tech high school and now I'm finishing a 5 years degree in Law, so that's all my best honestly speaking. I'd like to be clear about me and my job. I'm 23 years old and even if not taking direct work with jewellery and jewels crafting I 've been always surrounded by this gold-world, since I live in Valenza (where 25000 people live, 90% involved in jewellery) and since my grandfather was a goldsmith and my dad is manager working for Bulgari here in Valenza. This year, searching for a job, I found an offer from mr Bettonte: he was looking for a young person ready to improve his business in marketing-tech. He thought I was good at it, so he hired me. By now I did (in my humble opinion) a nice job, since he wanted me to make a new website and to make it visible on the first page of google. I have a few skills in programming a website, anycase I did it with an hard work and finally I set it up in the first page using good key words (even in english, since I made and english version of this website and if you search on google for jewelry mountings valenza we are up there) but opening a new shop-dedicated site would be very hard for me, and it would take too long. That's why I choosed to use a readytogo shop like etsy, but going on I realised that it was very hard.

    Thanks for all your hints James, I reached good results, can you please tell me if a kinon d3200 or d3300 with a 18-55 vr II would be good for this type of photos?

    Chris I understand what you mean, but I can explain you how things go here: 0,35€ are taken by a stonesetter to set a small stone in silver, if the stone was bigger and the material was gold, he would take much more. My father told me that in bulgari stonesetters are paid 1,30€ per stone, but they are working with gold. Another fact is that here in Valenza more than 2500 people where stonesetters, but during the last decade the volume of work crashed down so they are now all searching for work. That's why I find this competitive price even for silver, but keeping a top notch quality. The last week a stonesetter knocked our laboratory door crying asking for work, he offered us 0,15€ per stone. Do you understand now? to answer your question, if they are lucky enought to work for bulgari, damiani or pasquale bruni they survive greatly, if they are out of the game they do not survive. 15€, I know that it's very poor but we have to work like Chinese people nowadays, if I rise the price too much I fear to loose more potential customers ... am I right?

    Then I'd like to ask you a further question and also have to tell you an important thing I discovered working these months (maybe I'll open a new thread for this)

    Swarowski stones. I read too many adverts in Etsy with people claming they are using swarowski stones

    see this one

    https://www.etsy.com/it/listing/2151...w_type=gallery

    swarowski? 28$ for a 18x13 stone? That's weird. Even using words like gold and so on for a silver ring that maybe (maybe) was just rhodium bathed.

    Since I started working in my factory I have to take control over stones and so on, including swarowski zirconias. Swarowski zirconias (pure brillance) are swarowsky top quality cubic zirconia, all laser marked with two words "swarowski zirconia" (you can see this engraving using a 10-15x lens). Swarowski also sells synthetic stones, like synthetic spinel and corundum, and also alpinite. The stones made in this materials are a lot cheaper than zirconias pure brillance since they are also likely to be broken by the stone setter since they are softer than zirconias, the got broken easily. So I discovered a a stone seller was selling us stones as zirconias but they were not laser engraved and they got broke: He tried to find excuses but in the end I reached an agreement for half the price he made for us before (since he was scared that we could spread his wrong behaviours) you can say that I am wrong too reaching agreements with a dishonest man, but I had to do the best for my business. Then my suggestions is to take a good lens an see before you buy: swarowski zirconia MUST have the laser engraving. If they are not engraved, they are cheating you, the stones may be not swarowski or may be swarowskis corundum spinel an alpinite, which are not engraved by them. See the link before and you find the trick. She claim the stone is swaworski 18x13 oval, but the maximum for a swarowski oval is 8x6 (I have in my hands now the created stones catalogue, so I am not wrong) So this girls is obviously cheating and also using tricky terms. How can Etsy allow this in your opinion?

    Thanks again and happy new year!

    Federico

  10. #20
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Dubai (originally from Brighton UK)
    Posts
    39

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    Quote Originally Posted by enigma View Post
    Just looking at your shop now and for some reason the stone colour options only come up in Italian so you may want to change that.
    Also I notice you only have one available at least on some items, you need to have more otherwise when you sell one you will have to relist the item and get charged a relisting fee.
    I realise you are probably trying to get across that they are handmade to order but it will cost you 20 cents every time that you don't otherwise need to pay and it all adds up.
    The problem really though is that you are competing on a global market with mass produced products so you need to stand out more as handmade I think.
    Maybe work on your designs to make them more unusual?
    Sorry I hope that doesn't come across as rude but its a tough market out there.

    Just to clarify - Even if you list 10 items - etsy charges you 20 cents each time you sell one, so there is no benefit in listing 10 in one go, plus, when you relist an item it goes to the top of the search results pile, and I am not sure if that happens if you sell 1 of the 10 you have listed....

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