SPEAKER_00
Today I'm diving into your jewelry collection, how to identify if it's cohesive or if it's a hot mess and what to do about it. My name is Robin Clark and I'm obsessed with all things business and marketing. I'm a jewelry designer who left the corporate world and grew a successful jewelry business.

And now I help women just like you from around the world do the same. I'm the founder and CEO of the Jewelry Business Academy. The host of the Jewelry Business Academy podcast and I'm here to help you scale your jewelry business to six figures and beyond without burning out.

Through my coaching program and podcast, I help you navigate the challenging seasons of business as well as teach you the secrets to building a sustainable business that makes you feel good. So grab a cup of tea and your notebook, get cozy and let's dive in. Welcome back.

I'm so glad to have you here and I'm really excited to dive into today's episode with you. I decided that I would do a little solo-sode quickly about is your jewelry collection cohesive or is it a hot mess? And if you're wondering why I was inspired to do this solo-sode on this topic, it's because I follow so many jewelry businesses on Instagram and I can honestly say I have been looking at the homepage recently and some of these jewelry businesses have so much potential, but their collections are not cohesive at all. It looks so chaotic, it looks so stressful and it's not just stressful as a business owner, but it's stressful as a customer.

And so I wanted to do this little deep dive into your collection. So to start with, let's just define what a cohesive jewelry collection would be. So to me, a cohesive jewelry collection looks like a couple of things.

It looks like it was designed and made by one person, the same person. So if you wanna stop and take a step back and look at your collection and be like, hmm, does this all look like it was designed and made by the same person, that would be your first step. Now, if you're somebody who's purchasing wholesale and reselling, that's totally fine as well.

I still have the same question for you. Does it still look like the same person designed and made these pieces? And the reason this is so crucial is if your collection doesn't look like it was made and designed by the same person, you are going to have diluted your brand. I can almost guarantee anyone who says, well, it looks like like three or four people have designed these pieces.

You have a diluted brand. And it's hard for customers to connect to a diluted brand. It's hard for them to be clear on what your messaging is.

It's hard for them to be clear on what you sell. So that's the first step. Identify, does this all look like it was made and designed by the same person? The next question is, are all your pieces made with the same material? Or have you gone and catered to everyone and made your pieces in gold and silver and rose gold and all the different options? So that's the second question.

And I know some people are working with like Palomacle or they're working with gemstones and all of this. I still want you to take a look and say, okay, how many different materials are in my collection? Because if you have too many different types of materials, that's a problem, especially when you're a smaller business. If you are absolutely massive, making millions, well, you can do what you want at that point.

But to get your business to the point where it's doing really well, it needs to be very niche. Which means that you ideally don't want to be selling gold, fill and silver. Choose one, choose your favorites and focus in on that.

Hone in on the pieces that bring you joy and that is gonna draw in your ideal customer. So we wanna ask ourselves those two questions. Next question is, say somebody purchases from you online.

Three months later, they see you at an event and they purchase from you there. And like eight months later, they see your jewelry in stores from a distance before they even see your logo. Or if they see somebody walking down the street wearing one of your pieces, are they gonna know immediately, ooh, that's Sarah's designs or whatever it is.

Are they gonna be able to identify that this is all from the same collection? Now, I know this may be hard for some people who maybe work with dainty minimalist gold designs. There's a lot of that out there. But if you are making your pieces, there is a way for you to make it so it's very clear.

You can have one unique feature on all your pieces where people are like, oh yeah, that looks like the same designer. So you wanna take that into account. Is your brand gonna be recognizable? We want to make sure you have a brand that is going to drive brand awareness.

And it's so interesting to me to see these business owners who think that building a cohesive brand is all about colors, all about messaging, all about this. And they completely forget about their collection. It starts with your collection.

Everything else comes after that. So we wanna make sure that you're very clear on that. And then we can look at your messaging and your colors and all of that.

That's all very valuable, but we don't wanna forget about the collection. So a collection that to me is a hot mess, has multiple different materials, completely different styles. So they're gonna have fine things, dainty things, statement things.

It's gonna look like somebody went to a thrift store and just collected all these random things and then went to a market and bought some other random things. And I know this may sound dramatic, but I see this. There are a lot of business owners whose collections are a bit of a mishmash.

And sometimes it's because they're trying to please everybody. They have a customer who's like, oh, I love this design of yours, but I want it in silver, because I only wear silver. So they start by making that piece in silver for them.

And then somebody else comes along and they're like, oh, I love that you make jewelry, but I saw this piece of jewelry that my friend bought and I want to know if you can make something similar and it has this polymer clay and this is this. And so they go buy the supplies and they make it and they're like, oh, this is kind of cute. And then they start selling that as well and add it to their collection.

That's how these messy collections start. It was never intentional. I totally understand that.

But I think if I can just bring awareness to you, to the things that you wanna ask yourself about your collection, so you can take a step back and be like, okay, is this cohesive or is this not? And I just wanna say that this is one of the most emotional tasks that you can do in your business because they're your designs, they're your babies. It's really hard to say, oh, I have to cut you, sorry. So you wanna do this on a day that you're feeling emotionally strong.

You wanna acknowledge that, yeah, it's hard to cut designs, but just because it's hard doesn't mean that it's not a good decision. So I do recommend cutting designs that don't fit within your brand. Doesn't mean you can't sell them, you can just do a sale to move those pieces and then hone in on what it is that you want your brand to be known for.

If you were to ask your customers, what are three words that come to mind when you think of my business and my brand and my jewelry collection? What do you want those three words to be? And you can even test this, go ask them now and then refine your collection and ask them in a couple of weeks again. And that's how you're gonna know you're on the right track. So I wanna keep this short and sweet because I want you to just really take action.

So make sure that you took your notes during this episode, you've taken time to answer those questions. And then let me know how it goes. I would love to hear from you.

As always, you can tag me on Instagram, it's Rubin Tart Coaching, and let me know how it goes. And this is actually one of the first things that we dive into in the jewelry business academy is developing a cohesive collection. And we look at so many different elements and we have a step-by-step framework for developing that collection and identifying the key pieces that need to be part of that.

We need to look at the different price points we need. And we have that framework within the jewelry business academy. And I've seen clients go through this who were feeling very overwhelmed initially at the thought of refining their collection.

But it's a very step-by-step easy process once you've gone through that framework. And the end result is always more sales and more headspace and more time and less expenses. So there are so many benefits to having that cohesive collection.

And I've seen clients, you know, within a few weeks of refining their collection, refining their messaging, come to me and say, I just feel so much more in alignment with my brand and the way I'm going, the direction I'm going. But I also have more headspace and I have more time and I have more energy and I'm driving more sales, which at the end of the day is what we're looking for, especially in the jewelry business academy. So if you're curious to learn a little bit more about that, to learn more about the jewelry business academy and if you would like my eyes on your business and on your collection and you'd like my support in refining your collection, then the jewelry business academy is the place to do it.

You can head to jorybusinessacademy.ca to learn more. And I'll see you over there.

Thank you so much for joining us today and I hope you learned so much from this episode. And as we mentioned, we'd love to hear from you. So make sure you screenshot the episode you're listening to and tag us on Instagram.

It's Robin Clark Coaching. And if you are enjoying these podcasts, if they have impacted your business building journey, if they have impacted your life, if they are uplifting you, if they are helping guide you, if they are helping build momentum in your business, I would love if you could take one minute to leave us a review on Apple podcasts. You can pause right here and head to Apple podcasts and leave a five-star review with the short and sweet message.

I really, really appreciate you taking the time to do that. And it means that we can keep producing more and more free valuable content for you to help you and support you on your business building journey. And so thank you in advance for taking the time to do that.

And I'm looking forward to reading them. And as I mentioned, I have got a lot of incredible episodes coming up over the next few weeks for you, which I cannot wait to share. So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss out.