Downtown Districts: Your local downtown is one of the most obvious places to start because these are usually full of unique boutiques or galleries that are privately owned. Of course, this isn’t always the case, so be prepared to find chain stores or even stores that you don’t realize could actually be franchises. My first successful wholesale account came from a store called Chico’s. At the time, many years ago, it was privately owned, even though it was part of a franchise. The shop owner could select and buy a lot of the merchandise herself. However, now these same stores are no longer able to do this but instead stock all the same merchandise.
Newspaper Ads: Whenever a new gallery or shop opens, they will often run promotional ads in the local paper. Normally, these are display ads and are easily found by scanning pages of your local section or arts and entertainment sections. I’ve even learned about new businesses before they opened their doors by looking through the help wanted section of the paper because they will normally run ads for sales help before they open.
Friends and Family: Let your friends and family members know that you are looking for possible retail outlets for your jewelry so that when they are out and about they can keep an eye out for you and help you scout out new places. One key to this, however, is to emphasize that if they do happen upon a place you might be interested in, they really need to pick up a business card for you. Telling you there’s this neat shop somewhere in New Orleans isn’t going to be that helpful. You need a business card that has the name, address, phone number, and (hopefully) manager or owner’s name. Don’t forget to also pick cards up when you are out shopping. Start a collection and soon you’ll be amazed at how many places you’ll start adding to your list of potential customers.
Yellow Pages: This is another obvious place to look. Check out sections like galleries, art galleries, boutiques, clothing stores, gift shops, and other sections of the directory that might have possibilities. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that these come out once a year, so some of the information may be old. A shop may have gone out of business, changed owners, or even phone numbers. You’ll need to double check that the information is correct before you make any specific plans.
Road Trips: Once you scour your local area for shops, you may want to start branching out into new territory. This can be kind of fun if you plan the trip right. I’ve done this a few times with a fellow artist who makes similar yet different items than I do. Normally, we won’t drive much more than an hour from home, and we plan to make a day of it, which includes lunch at a nice restaurant. We bring our merchandise just in case, but generally, we plan on the trip being merely a “data collection” journey. On one trip, we both lucked out and found The Black Dog Gallery in Cocoa, Florida. The owner was very friendly, and we have both had success selling our work to her.
Once you get started, you’ll probably find other ways to locate even more stores and galleries, but these five resources have worked well for me in the past. Of course, they all take time, but if you plan to sell your jewelry regularly, then you will soon learn that you need to put (at least) as much time into marketing as you do making it.
