Question:
Hi I have gotten advice and response from you before, I really appreciate it. I have a request for some advice or opinion. I am very low income, single mother of two and can only buy beads a few times a year, mainly when I get my tax return.

I purchase online from a wholesaler, but some strands of beads (I'm sure you know) are up in the 30-50 dollar range for one 16" strand, I'm kind of stuck on wondering if its a good idea to just buy a couple of these strands and make a couple of higher end necklaces (or sets) or if I should stick with the lower priced strands in the 5-10 dollar range to start with.

I have a website where I sell my jewelry I have made, but have not had very many sales in the 8 months I have had it up and running. I love buying lots of beads because my creativity goes so much further.

I'm just wondering if you have an opinion or advice or ides that might work for me. Any advice would be highly appreciated. If I could afford to buy your videos I would have the whole collection! They look very interesting! Your wife Kay seems like a very talented and gifted person. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank You in advance!

Answer:
It is extremely important that you have a wide range of prices for your customers to choose from. This is one of the secrets to successfully selling your jewelry. It is also important to have as many pieces as possible for your customers to choose from. No matter how much money you have to spend, you will always have to buy so that you can divide your money between beads that will be for higher priced jewelry and ones that will be for lower priced items.

You will have to decide what percentage of your jewelry will be low priced and how much will be higher priced. This depends on your customer base. In general I would suggest that you do a small percentage of high priced items and the rest of your inventory split between low and medium priced items.

When you buy expensive strands of beads, they can eat up your bead budget quickly. This is why we offer smaller quantities of expensive beads for sale. This way you can get the expensive beads that you love and not have to buy the whole strand! We also sort out the bad beads so that you don’t have to take the good with the bad. This saves you money! If you compare apples to apples, our bead sets will be about the same price or less than you would pay “wholesale” for the same number of beads by the strand.