Should You Put Price Tags on Your Jewelry?

Do you sell more jewelry by placing a visible price tag on each piece, or by leaving the price a mystery until the customer inquires about it?

Some jewelry artists prefer to leave prices off their jewelry, so customers will have to ask about pieces that interest them – thereby giving the jeweler the opening to establish a relationship with the customer and sell the piece.

Others feel that customers will assume jewelry without price tags must be too expensive, and that they'll leave your booth without ever asking how much that beautiful bracelet costs.

When I'm shopping, I personally am one of the customers who are too shy to ask about the prices on items that don't have visible price tags. Artists of all kinds of handcrafts have lost sales to me because I didn't see any price tags and didn't feel comfortable asking about their prices.

I put visible price tags on all my jewelry. I usually work my booth alone, and the more information I make accessible to my customers, the greater my chance of making sales to them.

Sometimes I'm in a swarm of customers who are asking questions and making purchases – and someone on the fringes wondering whether they can afford a particular pair of earrings wouldn't bother to wait to find out while I'm closing other sales and packaging other customers' jewelry.

But with visible pricing, customers know immediately whether they can afford the piece, so I won't lose their business to another jewelry vendor if they'd like to purchase it.

Also, this way I don't have to try to remember my prices for each piece! I'm not a numbers-oriented person, and I do best if I make the numbers-work as simple as possible for myself.

If you're undecided on this issue, you may want to run a test at your next show by pricing half your items and leaving price tags off the other half. See which method seems to bring you the most sales!

What kind of price labels do you use?

For putting prices on all my jewelry, I buy the smallest-size removable stickers from local office supply stores. I write the prices on these stickers with a fine-point Sharpie marker, and stick them on a bottom corner of the front my jewelry hang tags and earring cards. Then when I sell a piece of jewelry, I can easily peel off the removable price sticker as I package the piece.

Or if I'm displaying a group of items that are all priced the same, I omit the individual stickers and put up a small sign in a picture frame stating something like "Gemstone Bead Earrings – $16".

It's best to use a form of price labeling that would be difficult for someone to remove and switch around when you're not looking. Some jewelers prefer to use "sharkskin" tags (barbell-shaped stickers that fold around a bracelet or necklace with the large ends adhered together), while others print the pricing directly on their jewelry cards and hang tags.