How to start a jewelry brand

The lane decides your price, your factory and the words you can legally put on the product page. Choose it first, and keep it for the first reorder cycle. Mixing fine gold promises with a fashion plating budget is how jewelry brands lose trust.

Three specialist lanes sit on top of these: personalized pieces (which live or die on order data and a remake policy), iced-out statement pieces (which need setting specialists and honest stone claims) and artisan one-offs (which trade repeatability for character).

Launch a small, coherent collection, not twenty disconnected pieces. Jewelry brands grow by repeating a clear design language, so pick one and get variety from finish, chain length, stone, size or personalization rather than from unrelated constructions. Each new construction means a new CAD file, often a new mold and another sampling round.

Set the retail price for each piece before the designer starts, and check that the metal and finish can honestly carry it with margin left after plating, stones, packaging and returns. If a sketch needs more metal or stone than the price can carry, change the design. Don't quietly thin the plating later.

A general product designer can make a beautiful ring render that can't be cast, set or worn comfortably. Jewelry CAD designers think about wall thickness, prong sizes, stone seats, casting allowance, polishing loss and size grading. Search for "jewelry CAD", "MatrixGold", "Rhino jewelry" or "design for manufacturing", not "product designer".

Prefer portfolios of pieces that were actually produced, run a paid test on one piece before you hand over a collection, and agree in writing that you get the editable source files plus the STL and 3DM exports factories ask for.

Good jewelry CAD work usually costs less than founders expect, which is one more reason to pay for a test instead of skipping the designer. The Freelance Database in Product Sourcing Secrets lists jewelry CAD designers by specialty and price point.

A mood board gets you a guess. A factory needs measurements, not moods: dimensions and sizes, the base metal and karat, the finish in words the FTC allows (solid, filled, vermeil, plated or PVD, never just "gold"), plating thickness, stones and findings. Date every version of the brief so everyone quotes the same one. For the general method, see what is a tech pack.

Jewelry factories are not interchangeable. Search by construction and metal ("925 silver OEM", "stainless PVD jewelry factory"), not "jewelry". A plated brass necklace line and a fine gold workshop are different businesses.

The Vault, the factory database that comes with Product Sourcing Secrets, holds 24 jewelry suppliers, and the ones on our public jewelry manufacturers list show the split: fine jewelry makers in Thailand, brass fashion and stainless steel factories in China, and a lab-grown diamond maker in India.

Use more than one path: domestic casting houses and bench jewelers for speed, small batches and precious metals; overseas OEM partners for larger private-label programs; marketplaces for breadth; and import records to see who has shipped jewelry to brands you respect. Our guide on how to find a manufacturer shows that last method.

Then qualify: find out what is done in house and what is sent out, and cut the longlist to three that can make the same construction.

A unit price alone tells you little in jewelry. Metal prices move, plating thickness changes wear life, and molds or setting labor can outweigh a cheap unit price. Send all three factories the same brief so the quotes can be compared at all, then build the full cost with our landed cost guide. The course's Jewelry track has the questions we send with every jewelry RFQ and how we compare the answers.

Never approve from a render. Wear the sample for a few weeks, especially plated and PVD finishes, and write feedback as measurements ("widen the band to 4.5 mm"), not moods. When a sample passes, seal it as the standard bulk must match.

In the US, the FTC Jewelry Guides (16 CFR Part 23) set out which metal and stone descriptions the FTC considers deceptive. They apply to everyone who sells jewelry, from the factory to your product page. Here is what the common words require, from the Guides' own text (checked October 22, 2026):

Two details trip people up. The plating minimums are measured in fine gold equivalent, so a micron of 12K gold counts as half a micron. And "corrosion resistant" or "rust proof" have their own rules. Ask the factory for plating thickness readings on bulk, not only on the sample, and keep them with the purchase order.

Jewelry is worn against skin and, for children, sometimes put in the mouth. Plan the testing in the brief, not after the shipment lands.

• United States, adult jewelry. The CPSC says there are no mandatory federal requirements specific to jewelry, and points to the voluntary ASTM F2999 standard for adult jewelry as industry best practice.
• United States, children's jewelry. A product designed or intended primarily for children 12 or younger is a children's product. Accessible parts may not contain more than 100 ppm lead, the product must be tested by a CPSC-accepted third-party lab, and the importer or US maker must issue a Children's Product Certificate. ASTM F2923 is the voluntary children's jewelry standard.
• California. Since January 1, 2012, children's jewelry with more than 0.03% (300 ppm) cadmium by weight may not be sold in California.
• EU and UK. REACH Annex XVII limits nickel release from jewelry in prolonged skin contact to 0.5 µg/cm² a week, and requires piercing posts to release less than 0.2 µg/cm² a week. It bans 0.05% or more lead by weight in any part of a jewelry article and 0.01% or more cadmium in metal parts. The UK's retained version of REACH has the same limits.

Use an accredited lab and keep reports tied to the production lot. For anything you are unsure about, ask a compliance lab or a lawyer who works with jewelry imports.