Whether you've been selling jewelry online for a while or just decided on this niche, consider elevating your offering by adding print-on-demand (POD) jewelry to your product catalog.
With dropshipping POD jewelry, you can effortlessly offer your customers unique, personalized pieces that stand out.
Interested? That's good because you're in the right place! In this guide, we discuss how to sell jewelry products with a personalized touch and walk you through finding a great supplier to work with.
There's lots to chat about, so let's dive straight in!
What is Print on Demand?
Before we dive any further into this blog post, let's ensure we're all on the same page about what print-on-demand (POD) is.
In short, print-on-demand (POD) is a business model in which a retailer offers customized printed products, such as jewelry, apparel, or home goods, without holding any inventory. When a customer places an order, the retailer forwards the details to a third-party supplier, who prints the product on demand and ships it straight to your customer's door.
It’s a low-risk, low-financial-outlay business strategy that still empowers retailers to provide a seamless shopping experience for the customer.
There are no minimum order quantities, making this a highly scalable business model. Its flexibility allows for experimenting with various POD jewelry designs while maintaining minimal overhead costs. Moreover, with the right supplier, you can reach a global audience with your POD jewelry, a topic we will explore further later on.
Can I Make Money Selling POD Jewelry?
The quick answer is yes, you can make money selling POD jewelry.
According to Global Market Research, custom (POD) jewelry sales were worth $35.47 billion in 2020 and are projected to reach $60 billion by 2027.
Generally speaking, you can sell jewelry, including POD jewelry, at a high profit margin. Jewelry has a high perceived value, which is why many sellers set profit margins 3-5 times more than what they pay their supplier.
The other good news is that because most jewelry is lightweight, you can easily add shipping costs to the product price, allowing you to offer customers "free shipping." This always goes down well with shoppers! Offering free shipping not only makes your products more attractive to customers but also helps increase your sales. In fact, as many as 66% of consumers expect free shipping on their online purchases, so this is a quick and easy win!
How Does Print-on-Demand Jewelry Work?
Selling POD jewelry is pretty similar to other types of POD dropshipping.
But, if you're unfamiliar with that process, below we've provided a few pointers to help you get started:
Choose a POD jewelry niche: Use free tools like Google Keyword Planner to research the monthly search volume for personalized jewelry, such as engraved bracelets or pendants. Look for niches with a high search volume but relatively low competition, as these can be prime areas for new products. Additionally, explore Etsy, where thousands of personalized jewelry items are on sale. Analyze trends and popular designs to gain insights into what your customers are looking for. Take note of customer reviews and feedback to identify gaps in the market that you could fill with unique, customized products. This approach will help you select a niche with strong demand.
Find a POD supplier: With a clearer idea of what you want to sell, it’s time to find a reputable POD supplier. One of the easiest ways to find a reliable POD supplier is to work with a platform like Spocket, which closely vets its vendors before they go live on its marketplace and continues to monitor their fulfillment rates to ensure you only work with the highest-quality suppliers.
Integrate your POD supplier with your online store: If you use a dropshipping platform like Spocket, you can easily integrate it with your chosen eCommerce platform, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, or Wix. Once you’ve done this, you can import products from your chosen dropshipping/POD supplier to your store and start selling.
Making a sale: Thanks to the integration process discussed above, when you sell a piece of POD jewelry, it's automatically sent to your POD dropshipping supplier, who then produces the design according to the specifications your customer has selected.
Order production: Your supplier prints the POD specifications on the jewelry item, which is packed and shipped directly to the customer.
How to Pick a Print-on-Demand Supplier
We touched on the importance of finding a great dropshipping print-on-demand supplier to work with. However, this is such a crucial step to ensuring a smooth customer experience we thought it wise to outline some other essential criteria to look out for when picking suppliers to partner with:
- Products: The supplier must be committed to producing high-quality products and have a proven track record of doing so. The easiest way to test for this is to order a sample product to check the product quality yourself. This is a must. The last thing you need is negative reviews from customers who feel misled. Doing this means you can check a product’s quality, artistry, and overall look and feel of the jewelry. Also, when customers contact you to ask specific questions, you can answer them truthfully because you’ve handled the goods yourself!
- Images and descriptions: Ideally, your POD supplier will provide you with high-quality product images and descriptions that you can use and modify.
- Location: Look for a dropshipping platform that works with suppliers with a global reach. For example, suppliers based in the US and Europe, but also dropshipping platforms such as AliExpress and Alibaba that connect with suppliers from China.
- Prices: Your supplier needs to offer competitively priced products so that you, in turn, have plenty of room to make a healthy profit.
- Distribution: For reputation purposes, it’s essential that any jewelry supplier you work with manufactures its own products or holds inventory in its own warehouses. Otherwise, you have no idea where your products are coming from, and you may experience an additional hurdle in the fulfillment process that you have little control over.
- Fast order processing and shipping: Customers don’t want to wait weeks for their personalized jewelry. So, look for a dropshipping platform that insists its suppliers offer speedy shipping. Of course, shipping times will vary depending on supplier and customer location, order processing time, and delivery service used; however, looking for a supplier with good reviews based on their order fulfillment performance is a good idea.
Types of Print-on-Demand Jewelry
Moving on, let’s take a look at the kinds of jewelry products you can have customized to sell to your customers:
- Bracelets: These can be inscribed with a person’s name, personal message, quotation, or date on the inside or outer part of the bracelet.
- Necklaces: Perhaps your customers would like the names of children, their names, or that of your partner put on a necklace.
- Rings: Customers might want the date of their wedding, engagement, or important anniversary engraved on the inner part of the ring
- Earrings: Custom names or initial earrings might be popular with your customers.
- Cufflinks: Again, these can be engraved with a name or special date. They make a thoughtful present for a bride to give to her groom on their special day; similarly, personalized cufflinks make a nice present for groomsmen.
- Jewelry accessories: e.g., custom jewelry boxes, stands, etc.
With all that said, let’s now take a look at a few examples:
Bracelets
There are so many different styles of POD bracelets you can offer your customers.
Here are some examples from US supplier Green Millie:
Baby Bracelet
This comes in sterling silver, 18K gold, or rose gold. Customers simply tell you what name they want added to the bracelet plate, which month’s birthstone, and whether they want their inscriptions on the front or back of the plate. Shoppers can even choose from a selection of fonts.
For example, the birthstone featured here is for April.
Other ideas for POD bracelets you could sell include:
- Pet name bracelets (pictured below)
- Leather first-time dad bracelets with birth date and name of child inscribed on a metal plate
- Mom bracelets inscribed with their kids’ names
Necklaces
Mom Necklace With Kid's Names Birthstones
US supplier Green Millie offers this cute Mom necklace with interlocked sterling silver rings. Alternatively, there’s an 18K rose gold-plated version. Each ring can be inscribed with a child’s name and birthstone.
In this image, we see three rings, but customers can opt for any number between two and four rings.
Green Millie also offers other types of customizable jewelry, including:
Birth month flower rings can be customized to add a child’s birth month plus up to five flowers corresponding to that month. Again, they are available in sterling silver, or 18K rose gold plated.
Elsewhere, there are Grandma heart necklaces. These are a series of interlocking gold-plated hearts, each of which can be inscribed with a grandchild’s name.
Rings
Personalized Mom Birthstone Ring
Above, we have a POD ring from Green Millie made from sterling silver, rose gold, or 18K gold. Customers can choose up to six birthstones per ring, each representing the month their child was born. Above, we have birthstones for March, October, November, and June.
Other styles of rings that can be customized include:
- Stackable mom rings, with each ring bearing a kid’s name (pictured below)
- Pet sympathy gifts to mark the loss of a pet, inscribed with the pet’s name
Earrings
Customized Name Earrings
Pictured here is a set of minimalist-style customized name earrings. This specific pair is available in gold, silver, and rose gold. Shoppers can also choose from a range of different fonts to suit their individual style.
Earrings come in so many different styles, so you can offer customers a wide and attractive choice.
For example:
- Square heart-shaped earrings with your customer’s name across the center (pictured below from supplier, Yellow Angel)
- Monogram studs bearing your initials
- Dangle hoop earrings bearing a name across the hoop diameter
Alternatively, you could offer shoppers the option to engrave their earrings with an important date, such as a wedding day or their child's birth date, a special message, and so on.
Cufflinks
As mentioned above, custom cufflinks are a lovely personalized gift to present to someone on a special occasion. Pictured here is a pair of initials cufflinks from Green Millie/Spocket. They come in a range of fonts and styles and are accompanied by a tie clip that can also be engraved with initials, a date, and so on.
It’s also possible to offer customers other styles of cufflinks, for example:
- Personalized name letter cufflinks in a more minimalist design (pictured below)
- Custom name cufflinks bearing a person’s name in gold, silver, or rose gold
- Mr and Mrs cufflinks inscribed with the happy couple’s joint name and wedding date
Accessories
No print-on-demand jewelry store is complete without a comprehensive range of custom accessories.
For example, the personalized jewelry organizer and earring stand pictured above is from US supplier Rose Ariadne. It can be professionally laser cut and engraved with your customer’s information.
Other types of jewelry accessories include:
- Personalized ring and earring jewelry box
- Personalized engagement or wedding ring holders imprinted with the name of the happy couple and the date of their engagement on each
- Monogrammed cufflink boxes (pictured below) for groomsmen, grooms etc
In other words, it’s possible for you to offer a print-on-demand service for nearly every aspect of your jewelry dropshipping store. It just needs a bit of creative thinking and a great relationship with suppliers who understand and respond to your needs.
Things to Consider When Selling Print-on-Demand Jewelry
Now that you have a better idea of the types of print-on-demand jewelry available and a small sample of what’s on offer via Spocket and its US suppliers and integration with AliExpress, let’s look at a few other things to consider when selling POD jewelry:
Your product size: Be clear about the sizes of your products in your descriptions. You’re an ecommerce store, so it’s harder for customers to try products. That’s why your product descriptions need to include detailed information about the product sizing. Ideally, this should be accomplished with accurate sizing charts. So, ensure your supplier has these so you can pass true-to-life measurements on to customers. Examples include earring diameter and circumference, necklace chain lengths, bracelet circumference, ring sizes, etc.
Returns: This is a big one. Offer a customer-friendly returns policy on products if there's a problem with sizing. A flexible and straightforward returns process not only enhances shopper satisfaction but also builds trust in your brand.
Clearly outline what customers need to do to return or exchange items, including any time limits, conditions for returns, and whether they’ll need to cover shipping costs.
Be sure to speak to your supplier about their returns policy so that you can communicate that clearly to customers. Understanding your supplier’s terms will help you manage customer expectations and avoid any surprises.
Product materials: Ensure you provide plenty of details about the materials used in your POD jewelry, such as sterling silver, gold, rose gold, wood, and so on. Shoppers want to know exactly what they’re purchasing to make informed choices.
Product bundles: Consider offering personalized products in bundles by offering a discount. For example, if a customer buys a customized necklace and a pair of matching earrings or rings, this could make for a fabulous bundle and encourage customers to create unique gift sets they hadn’t considered.
Your brand image: You want to ensure your POD jewelry reflects your brand's message and ethos. For example, if your brand positions itself as modern and classy, your jewelry designs should embody elegance and sophistication. This might mean opting for minimalist designs with high-quality materials that convey timelessness and refinement.
Consider adding non-POD jewelry: Your aim is to make sales and keep customers on your online store, not have them distracted and moving away to a rival’s. So, why not boost what your store has to offer by adding a selection of trending non-POD jewelry pieces, too? This may appeal to customers looking for something ready-made. While they’re there, they might also be attracted by the appeal of your POD jewelry at the same time! In other words, you’re giving customers the best of everything you’ve curated, especially for them. Hopefully, this, in turn, will lead you to make more sales and more profit.
Are You Ready to Work with The Best Print-on-Demand Jewelry Suppliers?
Diving into the world of print-on-demand (POD) jewelry offers online sellers a treasure trove of opportunities. Whether you're a seasoned jewelry merchant or just starting out, integrating POD jewelry into your product lineup can set you apart with unique, personalized pieces that captivate your customers.
The flexibility of POD allows you to experiment with various designs without the burden of inventory costs, and the scalability ensures you can grow your business as demand increases.
By choosing the right POD supplier and focusing on high-quality, customizable options, you can provide exceptional value and create memorable customer experiences. Just remember that before you commit to working with a supplier, consider factors such as product quality and supplier reliability to ensure a seamless experience for your shoppers.
So, if you’re ready to offer jewelry that’s as unique as your customers, start exploring the best POD jewelry suppliers today!