Making Jewelry With Beads and Managing Your Jewelry Business

What To Look For In Any Bead Program

Laura Kay Posted in Jewelry Making | No Comments »

by Laura Kay

Running your own jewelry business is hard work, and sometimes the day-to-day business operations get in the way of doing what you love most: making beaded jewelry! Tasks like inventory tracking, customer invoicing and proper pricing are all tedious steps which can drain the energy and creativity right from you, leaving little time or interest in making jewelry with beads. It's easy to get overwhelmed with the business end of running your own jewelry business.

There are actually a lot of different options you can use when it comes to choosing software to run your jewelry business, from homemade spreadsheets and databases to spending a thousand dollars or more on some sophisticated jewelry store and business software packages. Here are three features you'll definitely want to have in any software package you buy to handle your beaded jewelry business:

Jewelry Pricing Calculator: Keeping track of what beads and supplies you have in stock is important for ordering and making sure you don't run out of essential items, but you should also be able to enter the items used in each piece and the software should be able to calculate the amount of money it costs to produce each piece. This will help make sure you'll never make a bead jewelry piece and sell it for less than you paid for the materials.

Invoice Printing and Customer Tracking: Tracking customers is just as important as being able to give your customers a professional receipt for their purchases. You don't want to hand someone a little piece of carbon paper with some scribbles on it after they spend $50 for an elegant beaded necklace and earring set. Tracking your customers is a great way to inform them of sales and craft shows you'll be at and really helps to grow your number of repeat customers!

Reasonable Price: When you're starting your beaded jewelry business you may not have a lot of money to spend initially, but you'd be surprised how quickly a good software package can pay for itself in saved time and professional results. Generally, you should expect to pay about $100 to $150 (but no more than that) for a decent bead software package.

Any beaded software package you buy should definitely include the features above as well as many others. Remember that a good bead jewelry program will actually help you make money by allowing you to communicate with your customers in a more professional manner and help you run all the tedious inventory and tracking functions that take up so much time. This way you'll have more time and creative energy to dedicate to designing and making your beaded jewelry!