Illustration by Bob Commander

"How much do you charge?"

In answer to this question, do you:
A: Pick a price out of thin air?
B: Have your customer quote what they think is a reasonable rate?
C: Look around to see what other jewelers are charging for similar work?
D: Consider how long the piece will take you to repair, what your findings will cost, and then factor in your overhead costs and profit margin to arrive at a reasonable hourly rate?

If you’ve been making jewelry for any length of time, you’ve probably been asked if you do repairs, and if you’ve said yes, then you’ve also faced this more difficult question already. While not everyone is suited to this side of the business, those who take on repair work often find it an excellent way to hone their skills while supplementing their income. Many have also found it a valuable way to gain new clients, who will eventually purchase new designs from them. But what price is fair to both you and your client, and how do you come up with it?

The correct answer, of course, is D. And yet, that’s often not how jewelry designers charge for their services — particularly those who are new to the field. As Suzanne Wade has written in these pages, it’s common for those starting out in the jewelry business to allow price-setting to become “an emotional judgment rather than a business decision.” (See “The Price of Success,” LJ November 1999).

If anything, pricing repairs can be even more perplexing for independent jewelers than pricing their own creations. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of inexperience: a jeweler may not have the background to know how long a piece will take to repair, or what the requirements of the job will be. Often, however, jewelers will find it difficult to charge a fair price for a job in which the majority goes toward their labor.

Whether it’s due to a lack of experience or to a misguided sense of guilt and fear, many will undercharge for repairs, to the extent that they find it hard to make a living. And yet, if you’re providing a high-quality service and conduct yourself professionally, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to justify charging a fair price — both to yourself and to your customers.

LOSE THE GUILT.

Designer and repair specialist Tom Dailing won Best of Show in the 2003 Wisconsin Jewelry Design Competition with this peal, ruby, and gold necklace.

The first thing you need to establish is that by taking on a repair job, you are providing a valuable service. It may sound obvious, but many undermine this basic truth and become sheepish about charging for their labor. After all, they may reason, fixing an old piece just isn’t the same as creating a unique work of art.

“To a great degree, the best repair work is almost unappreciated, because if it’s done exceptionally well, your customer can’t tell that anything was done. You haven’t changed the piece; you’ve just made it functional again,” says Thomas Dailing, a designer and repair specialist with Lee Ayers Jewelers in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Making a piece wearable again, restoring some of its original beauty — these are not small things. The fact that repair work may not seem especially glamorous doesn’t mean your customer won’t place a high value on it. In fact, because jewelry is so personal and sentimental, your client will generally be most grateful to have the piece brought back to life.

But are customers willing to pay a reasonable price for repair work? According to David Geller, jewelry consultant and author of Geller’s Blue Book of Jewelry Repair and Design, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

“The reason so many people who work at the bench don’t make a good living is they’re afraid the customer won’t pay a higher price. And yet, virtually no matter what you charge, we’ve found that nine out of 10 people will say, ‘Okay,’ and pay what you quote them,” he says.

“Here’s an example. In America, the lowest charge I’ve seen to resize an engagement ring is $5, and the highest price I’ve seen is $90 with a torch and $120 with a laser. And in each instance, 90 percent of the time the repair sale is closed.”

Obviously not everyone is catering to a clientele that can afford to pay $90 to have a ring resized. Still, Geller says that if the operation charging $5 raised its price for the same job to $12 or $15, it would still close somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of the time. And even if only 3û4 of the clients agreed to pay the higher price, the 15 percent loss in business volume would be more than offset by a 240 to 300 percent gain in dollar values.

SELL YOUR SERVICES.

Geller, who has first-hand experience with the benefits of raising repair prices [see “The Man who Wrote the (Blue) Book”], says that consumers are more likely to price-shop for a new item than they are for repair services.

“When a customer comes into the store to look at something in the case, they might have a want, but they have no idea what style it is they’re going to buy. They have to be enticed to even handle a piece. When they come into the store with a repair piece, they already know they’re going to have it fixed,” he says.

That doesn’t mean you don’t need to sell your services. What it does mean is that price shouldn’t be the deciding factor in whether or not you get the business.

“Customers often have no clue as to what the cost is going to be on a repair or restoration, but if they see you’re credible, knowledgeable, and that you care enough, they’ll generally allow you to go ahead and do the job no matter what your fees are,” says Hagop Matossian, owner of Bostonian Jewelers, a repair and restoration shop in Boston.

The key to gaining someone’s business is your skill and professionalism. “If a customer has the slightest doubt that you can handle Aunt Jane’s piece, there’s a very good chance you won’t be seeing them again,” he says.

Apart from competence, your prospective clients also place a high value on integrity. Often, customers will bring in an item that isn’t actually broken, but they may want an assessment of how much more wear they’ll be able to get out of it. In such cases, you have an opportunity to educate the client in a way that will create loyalty.

“Our approach is more informative and personal, rather than a hard sale. We try to assess where in its lifespan a piece lies,” says Dailing. “I know that some people take a more hard sales approach and tell the customer that a bunch of things need to be done, because it’s less talk, less effort, more money straight in the till. But you gain respect when you send someone away telling them they’ll get more wear out of piece, come back in six months. Nothing can outdo that. You create trust in that moment, and in the jewelry industry, trust is paramount.”

CHARGE FOR YOUR TIME.

Jewelsmith, Inc. owned by Linda McGill , has a staff of jewelers who both design and repair jewelry. Left: 8.5mm Tahitian pearl in a platform "cage" by Philip Dismuke for Jewelsmith, Inc. Right: Pendant/perfume botle by Phillip Dismuke for Jewelsmith, Inc. made of 18K gold, diamonds, citrine, and a fancy-cut tourmaline by Steven Avery.

One of the biggest hurdles many jewelry designers face is putting a dollar value on their time. But charging by the hour is the only way to earn a consistent living. Otherwise, pricing becomes too subjective — again, an emotional rather than a business decision.

“We’ll work on costume jewelry that often costs more to repair than fine jewelry,” says Linda McGill, owner of Jewelsmith in Durham, North Carolina. “Sterling, for example, is a really good conductor of heat, so it’s much harder and more time-consuming to size a sterling ring with turquoise than a big gold ring with a diamond.

“The same applies to less-expensive stones,” she continues. “For example, amethyst can’t take any heat, so if we’re asked to repair a piece with amethyst in it, we’ll have to be extra careful and take more time with it than we would on a piece which had a sapphire. And we’ll have to charge accordingly.”

McGill estimates that, once a quote is given, people who come into her store seeking a repair give their go-ahead more than 95 percent of the time. “Some people will think what we’re charging for a job is too expensive, but just as often customers are surprised it’s as inexpensive as it is. When we get questioned on price, it’s usually on a piece that’s not very valuable. And then the customers have to ask themselves the question: ‘Is it very valuable to me sentimentally?’”

FIX YOUR PRICE.

McGill, Dailing, and Matossian all use their own repair pricing guides or “menus,” which have evolved over the years as their businesses have grown. With a steady stream of jobs coming in, it’s vital to eliminate the guesswork and be able to quickly quote an accurate price.

So what’s a reasonable rate? Only you know what’s right for you, but it should go toward helping you meet your target annual income.

“I start from the premise that a craftsman ought to be paid $40,000 to $50,000 a year,” says Geller. Working within this range, he says that to meet benchworker salaries and benefits, cover overhead and insurance costs, and allow for an industry-standard three-time markup on findings, $100 per hour is reasonable. That means, of course, that a 15-minute job would cost $25.

But what if you’re self-employed, with no one working under you?

“For the typical independent jewelry designer, if they’re charging $25 to $45 an hour for their labor, there’s no way they can be profitable for what little repair work they do. They should look at charging closer to $65 an hour,” he says.

The same reasoning applies to hobbyists.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of hobbyists, who aren’t in it to make money. But even if they don’t use my pricing structure, they should still raise their prices. So that if they’re only doing it for a hobby, the hobby ought to pay for everything they buy,” he says.

Point well taken. After all, even if you’re not in the business to make money, you’re not in it to lose money either.

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Mark Lurie is a freelance writer based in Toronto, and a frequent contributor to Lapidary Journal.