Hiring Help for Your Jewelry Business
by Rena Klingenberg
What To Do?
As your jewelry business grows and prospers, you may reach the point where you need to consider hiring help.
A jewelry artist facing this issue recently asked me:
"My jewelry business is at the point of needing to hire contract labor. What is the going rate, and how is it usually paid - per piece, or per hour?"
My answer: When it comes to hiring help for your jewelry business, the going rate would really depend on the tasks that you're expecting employees to do for you.
For example, basic beading would obviously be less expensive to hire than if you're seeking someone who has more advanced skills such as silversmithing or torch work.
I would prefer to hire people on a per-project basis or per-piece-of-jewelry basis, instead of on an hourly basis. That way, you can be sure of your labor cost per piece.
Particularly if you're planning to wholesale your jewelry lines, it's absolutely vital to be able to know and control your costs, which is much harder to do if employees have the flexibility to take as long as they want, and therefore run the cost up or down when creating a piece of jewelry for you.
When setting your rate, it might be best to work backwards - figure how much you can actually afford to pay per piece of jewelry and still turn an adequate profit.
If you don't need highly skilled employees to help with your jewelry making, one good option is to use a sheltered workshop, or some similar place in your area where disabled people can be hired to work in a controlled environment on repetitive products.
If you're interested in this option, try Googling "sheltered workshop" + your town name, or "disabled" or "disability" + your town name, to find places like these in your area. Or call your local Social Services Dept. (in the government pages of your phone book) and ask for assistance with finding such places.
Other good hired-help options can be hiring high school or college students to come in and work in the afternoon or evening, or moms who can come and work while their children are in school.
You may also want to consider hiring someone to help with the non-jewelry-making parts of your business that can be time consuming. For example, having someone else do things like cleaning your jewelry, packing and shipping orders, photographing your new pieces, etc. can  really save you a lot of time.
One final consideration when working with contract labor, unfortunately, is the possibility of theft of your jewelry making components.
You may want to have your contract labor come over and work in your studio or home where you can keep an eye on what's going on, as opposed to taking supplies and tools to them and waiting to get finished jewelry in return.
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