[Jewelry making - Article 00350] - [Orchid] Bench jewellers working for the trade

[Phillip]

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    If a retail customer makes a big sale on a diamond and wants you to
    make something special, you do 'X' amount of work and charge
    accordingly. If the same customer has a customer's old diamonds and
    wants something new and you make it by hand how much can you charge
    as they are not making much money from the job and the level of craft
    needed was not meant to be very much? 

    Do you charge the same rate? Do you charge the same amount for low
    and high carat jewellery? 

    I have some retailers who insist I charge as much as the job offers
    and expect me to scale my pricing up and down accordingly. This has
    never been my policy. A $60,000 diamond in a pretty simple setting is
    still a pretty simple job. In every case, I expect to charge the same
    and if somebody is going to loose money it is not going to be me. I
    am not the sales person etc. 

    The retailers I am talking about are willing to pay for the top job
    and that means I can charge at the top rate in some cases and a
    scaled down rate at others. I don't feel I have a choice. 

    The whole concept blinds me. I know jewellers who charge as much as
    they think they can get away with. The people they work for don't
    know what a job is worth. This is trouble for the honest jeweller
    because they are often told that pave' e.g. is $2 per stone, but they
    are talking about pre-grained castings and well spread out melee and
    to the other jobs they say, no that can't be done. It goes around and
    around in round-abouts like that. 

    So in essence, I am wondering what people would think if I said to
    go with the flow. To charge $5 per re-tip (whether they are new tips
    or melted on solder), to charge much less on 9k to 18k etc and much
    less for a cheap ring no matter how it was made and of course much
    more for the $60,000 diamond ring that took two hours to clean up and
    set. 

    Obviously there is a limit to how much you can itemise your costs
    and the retailer in turn needs to know what charges to expect when
    they are quoting their customer, but should you scale your prices to
    suit other peoples concerns? 

    I know this question is one-sided because I have always disagreed to
    charging less for less expensive goods, but I wanted to know other
    jewellers opinions. 

Cheers,
Phil
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