[Jewelry making - Article 01148] - Re: [Orchid] Hagglers at your jewelry booth

[Jane Walker]

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    Hi all - I'll chip in with a view from 'down-under' Perth, Western
    Australia, where a good proportion of my sales are made to
    passengers from cruise ships who come to visit. The port of Fremantle
    sets up a small shopping facility (The criteria are that all items
    for sale should be Australian made and use Australian products (i.e.
    not Taiwanese/Chinese product)) in the passenger terminal, two small
    stalls sell hats, T-shirts and other souvenirs, another sells good
    opal jewellery, another sheepskin products - and I sell jewellery
    featuring natural gold nuggets, local South Sea pearls and other
    Australian stones and gemstones. Some of my product is medium to high
    end and nothing is less than around AUD$200. 

    I price my product carefully according to a formula - cost of
    materials + 15% for consumables, plus labour/time, and then my markup
    to retail pricing, which has to cover merchant fees and possible
    discounts. 

    The passengers mostly come from the US, Canada, the UK and Europe,
    and I've learned you can NEVER pick what sort of response you will
    get. 

    One shipload would not even say 'hello', another lot looked as
    though they really did not have much spending money at all (brought
    back 24 packs of coca-cola from the supermarket) another ship seemed
    to have a really wide range of rich and not so rich passengers,
    another was really friendly and bought happily. 

    As to haggling: most nationalities will try a bit. They seem to have
    most success with my prospector friend, who comes down with me to
    man our setup and sell the nuggets he's found over the winter.
    Something in his manner seems to trigger the 'well, what's your best
    price' questions. and he caves in. I simply say "everything in the
    display is a one-off, hand-made by me. You won't find anything else
    quite like it anywhere else in the world; and I know my work isn't
    over-priced." 

    This usually does the trick and I rarely have to discount. 

    On a slightly different note, a friend (Australian) took a cruise to
    Samoa and Fiji. They asked the price of some souvenirs, and one
    shop-keeper told them "today, the price is X, tomorrow, it will be
    twice as much, because the American ships are coming in and they
    like to haggle!" This is not to say we Aussies don't haggle - we do! 

Jane Walker
Australian Natural Gem Jewellery
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