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SELLING YOUR JEWELRY: How To Define Your Competitive Advantages

Posted by learntobead on September 22, 2022

What Is A Competitive Advantage?

Your competitive advantage (one or more) is what influences someone to buy something from you rather than one of your competitors. Do you make something of higher quality? Or less cost? Or especially noteworthy. Or use rare materials? What is it that sets you apart, or as Heather Bunker puts it, what is your secret sauce?

Competitive advantage is your ability to outperform your competition. It is you way to design, create, produce, distribute, market and/or sell products and services better than anyone else. It is something that cannot be easily replicated, or, if it is at some point, you can build back better.

There are all types of competitive advantages. Businesses might emphasize one, or several. Some examples of competitive advantages that jewelry design businesses might claim:

1. Authenticity and honesty

2. Rarity

3. Individuality, tailor-made, custom

4. Material quality

5. Technical prowess

6. Access, Location, Visibility

7. Timeliness

8. Special occasions (ready for those …weddings, etc.)

9. Financing, payment plans

10. Innovation

11. Extensive knowledge about materials and techniques

12. Environmentally friendly, sustainable

13. Socio-culturally friendly, sensitive

14. Prominence / reputation of designer

15. Mass quantity production

16. Service Orientation: repairs, custom work, style consultation

17. Pricing, discounts

18. Concurrently maintaining both quality and prices

19. Use of technology

20. Unusual designs

21. Brand loyalty

22. Ownership of copyright

23. Where differences from your competitors, such as different product mix or material use or better craftsmanship, might make you appear superior to them

Why Is Having A Competitive Advantage Important To You?

Competitive advantage is what makes your products and services more desirable to customers than any of your rivals. When you customers recognize these competitive advantages, you are more likely to make sales and more likely to be profitable. You are more likely to grow your business and enjoy greater customer loyalty.

The jewelry design business is very saturated worldwide. On Etsy on any day, there are over 6,000,000 (that’s 6 million) pieces of jewelry for sale. Don’t see this as a defeat. See this as a challenge. Your competitive advantage will help get you that edge, and make you more memorable.

Your competitive advantage is something that you can repeat or allude to in your business name, how you name your jewelry and jewelry lines, your tag line, your elevator pitch, your domain name, your marketing and branding strategies. It might influence how you design your products, distribute them, and put boundaries around your target market.

What Are The Components Underlying Any Competitive Advantage?

You use your competitive advantage as a means of communication. As such, to establish any competitive advantage, you must know 3 things:

1. VALUE PROPOSITION

2. TARGET MARKET

3. COMPETITION

1. Value Proposition

You must clearly identify what attributes of your products or services make them desirable to your customers. What is the value to them? Why does this value motivate them sufficiently to touch, wear, buy and/or collect your jewelry? What things might further get them to show off and talk about your jewelry to their friends, acquaintances and relatives?

2. Target Market

Your advantages will not be seen and understood equally by all people. And you don’t really care about all people. You care specifically about your more narrow market audience or market niche focus. What does your advantage look like to them? Why will it motivate them? What evidence are you using to know this?

You might take the time to ask some of your customers why they buy from you and not your competition?

3. Competition

Your competitive advantage is always in reference to some other business or designer. It is comparative. It differentiates you. It influences a choice of you over others. You competition might be traditional. It might be non-traditional. It might be emerging.

How does your competition look like from your customer’s viewpoint?

How Do You Determine Your Competitive Advantage(s)?

First, think about your strengths.

Second, think about the strengths and weaknesses of your major competitors. These competitors might be in your same geographic location, or they may be online.

Search on Google and Etsy for jewelry makers. How do they present themselves? What qualities do they emphasize? What competitive advantages do they claim? Based on what evidence? How do they link their idea of competitive advantage to their assessments of customer needs, wants and desires?

Last, list what things you are better at than your competitors.

____________________

FOOTNOTES

Bunker, Heather. What Is Your Handmade Business’s Secret Sauce — Or Differentiator? 5/6/2020.

As referenced in:
https://www.heatherbunker.com/post/what-is-your-handmade-businesss-secret-sauce-or-differentiator

Peterdy, Kyle. Competitive Advantage. 8/9/2022.

As referenced in:
https://www.heatherbunker.com/post/what-is-your-handmade-businesss-secret-sauce-or-differentiator

Twin, Alexandra. Competitive Advantage Definition with Types and Examples, Investopedia, 5/22/2022.

As referenced in:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/competitive_advantage.asp

_______________________________

Thank you. I hope you found this article useful.

Also, check out my website (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com).

Enroll in my jewelry design and business of craft Video Tutorials online. Begin with my ORIENTATION TO BEADS & JEWELRY FINDINGS COURSE.

Follow my articles on Medium.com.

Subscribe to my Learn To Bead blog (https://blog.landofodds.com).

Visit Land of Odds online (https://www.landofodds.com)for all your jewelry making supplies.

Check out my Jewelry Making and Beadwork Kits.

Add your name to my email list.

_________________________________

Other Articles of Interest by Warren Feld:

Saying Good-Bye! To Your Jewelry: A Rite Of Passage

The Jewelry Design Philosophy: Not Craft, Not Art, But Design

What Is Jewelry, Really?

The Jewelry Design Philosophy

Creativity: How Do You Get It? How Do You Enhance It?

Disciplinary Literacy and Fluency In Design

Becoming The Bead Artist and Jewelry Designer

5 Essential Questions Every Jewelry Designer Should Have An Answer For

Getting Started / Channeling Your Excitement

Getting Started / Developing Your Passion

Getting Started / Cultivating Your Practice

Becoming One With What Inspires You

Architectural Basics of Jewelry Design

Doubt / Self Doubt: Major Pitfalls For The Jewelry Designer

Techniques and Technologies: Knowing What To Do

Jewelry, Sex and Sexuality

Jewelry Making Materials: Knowing What To Do

Teaching Discplinary Literacy: Strategic Thinking In Jewelry Design

The Jewelry Designer’s Approach To Color

Point, Line, Plane, Shape, Form, Theme: Creating Something Out Of Nothing

The Jewelry Designer’s Path To Resonance

Jewelry Design Principles: Composing, Constructing, Manipulating

Jewelry Design Composition: Playing With Building Blocks Called Design Elements

Contemporary Jewelry Is Not A “Look” — It’s A Way Of Thinking

__________________________________

SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER
Merging Your Voice With Form

588pp, many images and diagrams Ebook or Print

PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way
Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!

184pp, many images and diagrams Ebook or Print

SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS

16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows

198pp, many images and diagrams Ebook or Print

___________________________________________

Posted in Art or Craft?, bead weaving, beads, beadwork, business of craft, craft shows, Entrepreneurship, jewelry design, jewelry making, pearl knotting, professional development, wire and metal | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

BUILDING YOUR BRAND: What Every Jewelry Designer Needs To Know!

Posted by learntobead on September 16, 2022

Branding

The ultimate goal and priority for any successful business is branding. Here your clients have an emotional connection to your work as a designer. They immediately recognize your style. Your choices in design. Your sensibilities. Your value and desirability for them. Branding is about what your customers perceive about you, and how you make them feel.

Your brand has ingredients; many moving parts which consist of the following:

  • The quality of your product or service
  • How it offers more value (for example, better quality, easier access, and/or lower price) than your competition
  • The speed at which you deliver it
  • The support you give your existing customers
  • The tone/look/feel of your product, copy, and advertising
  • How many different contexts and situations in which it is used

Jewelry designers who are successful know how to build your brand. In this chapter, I discuss this in more detail.

What Is Branding?

Branding is your product’s personality. You. Your voice. Your message. Your commitment. Your look. Your artist’s hand. But always remember, with branding, consistency is the real driving force behind it.

Your jewelry will have a personality. It may project one or more of these characteristics: handcrafted, artistic, sophisticated, human, enduring, novel, playful, versatile, fashionable, well-constructed, noticeable, enviable. These are the kinds of things you think your customer wants, desires or needs. These are the kinds of things customers buy jewelry for — to make their life a little better, a little bit more fun, a little bit more authentic. These are the kinds of things your customers want to feel when purchasing and wearing your jewelry.

Your brand is the name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies your product as distinct from those of others. Brand is often the most valuable asset of a company. As such, it needs to be groomed and managed carefully. Good branding will result in higher sales and greater longevity for the business. Good branding can make it easier to introduce new products. Good brand management seeks to make your product or service relevant to your target audience.

Your brand will be used in several contexts — in a store, on stationery, on websites, in posts, as signatures in email, with image captions. As such, it should be what is called scale-able — that is, it is flexible and adaptable enough to function in many contexts.

I am often asked: What if you want to make a lot of different kinds and styles of jewelry? If they are so different that they feel like they are different brands, you will either have to narrow your interests, or develop separate branding strategies for each set of products.

If you want to sell other types of products along with your jewelry, if they feel like a part of the same brand, then your branding strategy should be something that encompasses all the variations in products available. If they feel like separate brands, then you need a unique branding strategy for each one.

How Does Branding Differ From Marketing?

Businesses often make the mistake of talking about marketing, advertising and branding interchangeably. So people often confuse them. This confusion is unfortunate.

Marketing is what you do. Marketing efforts make people aware of you.

Advertising is a tool or technique. It is one of the many, many things marketers do.

Branding is what you are. Branding efforts create an emotional and enduring connection to you.

You cannot do effective marketing without a clear idea of your brand, and the words, look and feel needed to convey it. Branding should both precede and underlie any marketing effort. The brand is bigger than any particular marketing effort. The brand is what sticks in your customer’s mind about your product or company, whether they purchased your product or not.

Marketing may convince someone to buy. Branding will convince someone to be loyal.

Marketing will unearth buyers. Branding will make them advocate for you.

Why Is Branding Important?

Everything you do will have the effect of either inspiring or deterring your customer. Every thought, price, design choice, marketing promotion, merchandising decision, product placement — all of these lead up to your customer recognizing (or not) you and your jewelry as a brand. Branding is the essential foundation to a successful jewelry design business.

You should be in brand-building-mode from day 1!

Your Successful Branding Campaign

What drives you? Passion? Values? Purpose? People who create great brands are usually seeking to fulfill some inner longing of their own, some dream of how they want to live their lives.

How do you want your customer to perceive you? What is your long-term vision? What will your business look like when you are done? Can you track your progress? Can you create clear milestones to help you know if you are on tract? Why would someone do business with you rather than someone else?

Most successful brands use very human strategies in their communication and relationship building. You need to see and understand your business in relationship terms, not transactional ones. Give you brand an aura. Inspire your customer. How will you serve them? How will you solve their problems through the jewelry you design? What do you stand for? What differentiates you from your competition? What types of products and services can your customers expect from you?

A successful jewelry designer would not merely say “I make jewelry.” She would be more focused, more specific and more enthusiastic. She might say, “I create beautiful works of art to adorn people.” She might say, “I make people ooh and aah!” She might say, “I help people find that right décor accent they have been looking for.”

Your customer needs to know:

1. What you have to sell

2. How your jewelry changes something in their lives, and

3. What they have to do to get one of those

Try to emphasis specificity and avoid generic statements.

Who Are You Targeting
With Your Branding Campaign?

You want to target four key audiences with your branding campaign. These include:

1. New Customers

2. Influencers

3. Current Customers

4. Purchase Decision Makers

Your Business Name
Should Reflect Your Brand

How does your business name relate to your product and brand identity? Does your tag line support your brand identity?

If you plan on selling more products than just jewelry, you do not need the word jewelry in your name. Anticipate the future of your business as best as you can.

Before you select that name,

· Settle on a tone.

· Research that brand names you want are available.

· English is not the only language option for you.

· Getting feedback is your best friend.

The Names Your Call Your Jewelry And Lines Of Jewelry
Should Reflect Your Brand

Giving names to your jewelry and jewelry lines allows you to amplify your company name and brand, as well as their impacts and effects. But you must tie your naming strategies back into your primary brand identity.

Your LOGO and Other Graphics Designs
Should Reflect Your Brand

Does your logo relate to your products and values? Does the logo help people remember you?

You want effective visual brand identity. Fonts, colors, images, packaging, displays, use of particular visual elements to create distinction all should support your brand.

Your ELEVATOR PITCH and TAG Lines
Should Reflect Your Brand

Your Elevator Pitch and your Tag Line make it easier not only for your audience to understand exactly what your product is, but also gives them something easy and simple to share. Shareable information is spreadable. It can be posted, tweeted, texted and talked about. These give your brand a voice.

The Look of Your Pieces
Should Reflect Your Brand

You play with shapes, colors, sounds, scents, tastes, movements, textures, patterns, compositions, silhouettes, packaging, displays, constructions — are all of these supporting your brand?

Your Website and Online Social Profiles
Should Reflect Your Brand

Your website and online social profiles should look like your work — similar in look, feel and tone. Your work and your presence need to reflect on one another and be compatible.

Always include CALLS TO ACTION and/or LESSONS LEARNED throughout.

Your Portfolio
Should Reflect Your Brand

If you have a varied set of pieces to include in your Portfolio, organize them in such a way that your brand identity still shines through. This might involve placement, naming, descriptive text, sizing and layout.

Delivering Your Message Clearly

It goes without saying that you can have a lot of things organized and in place, but the crux comes in how you deliver your brand message clearly.

Think about: Why do things catch on? Why do people talk about you? How do you generate a buzz?

Developing your marketing message, pretesting it, pretesting again, testing, testing again is very important. Your message needs to be consistent and coherent and resonate with people. Your customer should be able to anticipate that your brand is going to deliver the same essence of a thing each and every time.

It is very tempting to try to be everything to everyone. And you may have different kinds of customers. But, at the end of the day, they all should have the same impression of your values and your products.

Your core message needs to have both an emotional side and a rational side.
Example: You make jewelry that lasts.

Your core message needs to be believable.
Example: Your jewelry is worn by the queen. [True or not true?]

Your core message needs to be relevant.
Example: I sell wedding jewelry. [Only relevant for people who need jewelry for a wedding; if that’s not your customer, this message won’t work.]

Your core message needs to be simple. If your customer cannot understand, remember or repeat your one thing, it is too complicated. It won’t stick in the person’s mind.

Give people things to talk about. Make things fun.

You will be using a multi-method approach towards getting your branding messages out. Advertising. Social Media. Attending events. Sponsorships. Selling in stores. Website. Donations. Packaging. Displays. You want your message to be reinforced over and over again from many angles and points of view.

Your marketing message should promise what you know you can actually deliver. Authenticity reconfirms actions, and in term, resonates well with customers.

Confirming Your Credibility

Tell and share your story in a way that creates a connection with your customer. Think about how things in your life led up to your success, how this relates to the brand identity you are trying to create, and, last, how the customer will relate to your story. You may find you have to re-write your story to meet your branding goals, and this is OK.

Your jewelry can be explained by your values and beliefs, your experiences and lifestyle. Put into words who you are, what your values and beliefs are, also your goals and how you approach the jewelry design process.

Show and tell the customer, in simple words and phrases, what the consequences (positive and/or negative) for them might be if they bought and wore your jewelry, and what the likelihood of any of these consequences occurring.

Offer any evidence that your assessment of consequences and their likelihood of occurring will happen.

People always trust word-of-mouth, so generating this is always important.

Commit to serving your customer over and over again, and they will learn to trust and rely on you.

Connecting To Your Clients Emotionally

Always work to market that emotional connection with your customers. Inspire affection. Create fantasy.

People need to see your business as a solution to their problems. So you want to make your competitive advantages (over all your other competitors) very visible and apparent. Show and tell them how you intend to minimize their risk should they choose your products to solve their problems. Not generic problems, but the actual concerns of your real and potential customers.

Customer concerns and problems may be one or more of the following:

· Want peace of mind

· Want to feel a part of a group or family

· Want to feel they make good choices

· Want to make life easier

· Want their questions answered

· Want to minimize any sense of risk or consequences

· Want to be the focus of attention

· Want to fit into a particular situation, context, event

· Want power and influence

· Want reassurance about something

· Want greater self-esteem

· Want meaning in their life

Listen to feedback. What are your better customers saying about your brand — positive, negative and everything in between? Show them that you hear what they are saying.

Always respond in meaningful ways. Follow-up on everything. The more you can repeat your customer’s first name in your follow-ups, the better their response.

Motivate Your Buyer, and
Secure Your Customer’s Loyalty

Recognize loyalty. Reward and cultivate. Give them access to new products and services first. Involve customers in your business. Let them test your products. Turn them into brand ambassadors and encourage them to spread word of mouth. Get feedback on your marketing strategies. Give them a sense of brand ownership. Engage in conversations. Respond to needs. Make them feel good. Give out referral rewards. Encourage them to post reviews online, and then thank them for these. Feature them on your website or blog. Follow-up after purchases.

SUCCESSFUL BRANDING STRATEGIES

There are many types of branding strategies, and you will be using several of these. These include,

1. Making new rules

2. Marketing a belief

3. Creating connection and belonging

4. Enabling expression

5. Creating culture

6. Leveraging tension

7. Using scarcity

8. Encouraging play

Since a lot of your business will occur online, you will be doing a lot of social media marketing.

Anticipate Problems

Your brand loyalty can disappear in almost an instant. You have to be diligent in anticipating or dealing with after the fact, things like

· Service interruptions

· Too many options diluting the brand

· Mixed messages confusing customers

· Negative publicity or negative word-of-mouth

· New competitors or existing competitors upping their game

The jewelry market is always big enough to attract new competitors as well as provide opportunities for existing competitors to deliver better, faster, cheaper. Face the challenge to elevate your marketing and branding strategies and tactics and deliver more value.

Brands Evolve

As time goes on, things come in and go out of fashion. Styles, colors, silhouettes. Your customers might begin to get bored or even dislike your brand. Stay relevant and flexible. A well-managed brand is always making adjustments.

You want to be ready to deal with this kind of thing before it happens. That means, it is important to be ready to re-brand. It is important to seek out and enter new markets. It is critical that you be in touch at all times with your customers’ goals and values.

Periodically, reality test.

For instance, visualize someone else taking over your business. Could they succeed at maintaining your brand?

Did your product deliver the experience the customer was looking for?

Have you maintained quality standards?

Did your employees and sales staff and sales agents understand your brand and sound like they know what they are talking about when interacting with customers?

Did you respond to phone calls and emails in a timely manner?

Do you customers believe you have their best interests at heart?

Measure Your Effectiveness

It is always important to build in evaluative and feedback components to all your business activities. Branding is no exception.

How well is your business (you and your employees) inspired to execute all your proposed marketing and branding activities?

Given the time and money you are spending, are you getting that Return On Investment (ROI)?

Does your brand resonate with your customers? Does this translate into sales and profitability?

Plan to do some experimenting by testing out different ideas before settling on one. Be sure your ideas fit your brand authenticity and align with your strategies.

_______________________________

Thank you. I hope you found this article useful.

Also, check out my website (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com).

Enroll in my jewelry design and business of craft Video Tutorials online. Begin with my ORIENTATION TO BEADS & JEWELRY FINDINGS COURSE.

Follow my articles on Medium.com.

Subscribe to my Learn To Bead blog (https://blog.landofodds.com).

Visit Land of Odds online (https://www.landofodds.com)for all your jewelry making supplies.

Check out my Jewelry Making and Beadwork Kits.

Add your name to my email list.

_________________________________

Other Articles of Interest by Warren Feld:

Saying Good-Bye! To Your Jewelry: A Rite Of Passage

The Jewelry Design Philosophy: Not Craft, Not Art, But Design

What Is Jewelry, Really?

The Jewelry Design Philosophy

Creativity: How Do You Get It? How Do You Enhance It?

Disciplinary Literacy and Fluency In Design

Becoming The Bead Artist and Jewelry Designer

5 Essential Questions Every Jewelry Designer Should Have An Answer For

Getting Started / Channeling Your Excitement

Getting Started / Developing Your Passion

Getting Started / Cultivating Your Practice

Becoming One With What Inspires You

Architectural Basics of Jewelry Design

Doubt / Self Doubt: Major Pitfalls For The Jewelry Designer

Techniques and Technologies: Knowing What To Do

Jewelry, Sex and Sexuality

Jewelry Making Materials: Knowing What To Do

Teaching Discplinary Literacy: Strategic Thinking In Jewelry Design

The Jewelry Designer’s Approach To Color

Point, Line, Plane, Shape, Form, Theme: Creating Something Out Of Nothing

The Jewelry Designer’s Path To Resonance

Jewelry Design Principles: Composing, Constructing, Manipulating

Jewelry Design Composition: Playing With Building Blocks Called Design Elements

Contemporary Jewelry Is Not A “Look” — It’s A Way Of Thinking

__________________________________

SO YOU WANT TO BE A JEWELRY DESIGNER
Merging Your Voice With Form

588pp, many images and diagrams Ebook or Print

PEARL KNOTTING…Warren’s Way
Easy. Simple. No tools. Anyone Can Do!

184pp, many images and diagrams Ebook or Print

SO YOU WANT TO DO CRAFT SHOWS

16 Lessons I Learned Doing Craft Shows

198pp, many images and diagrams Ebook or Print

___________________________________________

Posted in bead weaving, beads, beadwork, business of craft, craft shows, Entrepreneurship, jewelry design, jewelry making, pearl knotting, professional development, wire and metal | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Copyrighting Your Pieces: Let’s Not Confuse The Moral Value With The Legal Value

Posted by learntobead on May 14, 2020

Copyrighting Your Pieces

People think that they can copyright their designs, and this single act will be sufficient to prevent people from copying their work. However, to prove that someone has violated the copyright, and to sue them in court, is difficult, time-consuming and expensive to do.

A copyright is a grant from the United States Government for a specific jewelry design. It can cover the actual piece and the drawings for the piece, but cannot cover a specific idea or concept. You can only copyright something that is tangible.

Your registration covers the specific design, and may be flexible to cover a color change. However, if there is any obvious change in the piece — different shapes, different patterns, different sense of dimensionality — , you would want to register each variation on a core design.

You can also copyright a “collection of jewelry”, but you can’t add new designs to the collection, without getting new copyrights. In the collection, the pieces would need to share design elements and sensibilities, and these would need to be obvious.

Copyrights last for the life of the designer plus 70 years. Use form VA (Visual Arts). It usually takes about a year for the paperwork to go through, but your piece is considered copyrighted from the date you submitted your application.

The US Copyright Office will often reject jewelry designs for lacking authorship because they consist of common or usual shapes and forms. When submitting your application, you should present a well-reasoned argument, based on basic principles of jewelry design composition, form and function, as to why your jewelry and patterns should be copyrighted.

To bring a lawsuit, you must formally register your copyright with the US Library of Congress.

Federal law specifies the amount of damages you can sue for. In 2006, if your copyright registration was filed at least 3 months before the infringement, damages could range from $750 to $30,000 per infringement up to $150,000 maximum without having to prove that you had lost any profit. If your registration was last minute, you can only sue for your lost profit, and/or your infringer’s profits.

When is a copy an infringement? The standard is that the piece must be substantially similar and that the infringer copied the piece. There is a general idea that if the piece is 10% different, it is not an infringement. However, this is not a legal principle or standard. It’s “infringement” whether the person copied your design directly, or copied it from a photo or other image that someone had taken of your piece.

If you want to pursue any legal action, consult a copyright lawyer. A lawsuit can easily set you back $2,000–4,000.

The Mess over Copyright

It’s true. Many people copy other people’s jewelry. A large number of these folks want to copy other people’s jewelry exactly, bead by bead, clasp by clasp, part by part. They come into the store with pages torn from fashion or bead magazines, and want to make the same thing. They try to take photographs or make sketches of finished art-jewelry in our Open Window Gallery. They try to duplicate what they see others wearing — particularly the news ladies on the various programs on TV.

Over the years, beader after beader, and jewelry-maker after jewelry-maker, stood before us, plain scared that, if anyone saw their pieces, their designs would be stolen. After all, they saw it happening daily all around them. For too many of these artists, this was an insurmountable mountain. One of our friends would bring her pieces for us to see, but if another customer walked up to the counter, our friend would cover her pieces with her hands — shielding them from the potential design-thief. Over the 15 years we knew her, our friend was determined to launch herself into the jewelry design business — a business based on not allowing anyone to see her merchandise, for fear they would steal her designs. I’m sure she’ll be at this business enterprise of hers for 15 more years, as well. And not getting any further ahead.

If you want to sell your stuff, you have to put it out there. People will try to duplicate your pieces. So what? Successful businesses are successful, not just because they have great jewelry to sell, but because they’ve marketed well, placed their products well, priced their products fairly, distributed their products in a timely manner, and kept a tight control over the financial management of their businesses. They work, market, and invest in themselves so that eventually they create a “brand” recognition for their jewelry.

Jayden once took a lampworking class where the instructor was teaching one of her signature beads. However, in her instructions, she left out three pieces of critical information, which prevented her students from duplicating her work. The water of the lampwork-aquarium did not glisten blue. The dimensional arrangement of fish and plants could not be achieved. The students were very upset, because their pieces were inferior, by comparison, to those of the teacher. The students blamed themselves. But this teacher had been very dishonest and deceitful with them. She hadn’t really taught them how to make the bead they came to this class to learn to make.

If you want to teach classes or publish your work in a magazine or book, you have to put your instructions out there, (as well as present them so that anyone following them can come up with a result that is similar to the original as pictured). People will follow your instructions. They may teach your instructions. They may try to publish your instructions as their own in another book. So what? Successful instructors are successful, not just because they have great patterns to sell, but because they’ve marketed them well, placed them to maximize their visibility, priced them fairly, and created a steadfast brand loyalty on the part of their students and readers, who begin to associate particular looks, styles, steps and designs with particular designers.

If you don’t want the public to “consume your intellectual property,” don’t teach and don’t publish. I always felt that if you teach or publish instructions for the consumable public, then it’s like making a contract with them that they can follow and use those instructions. It’s no longer exclusively yours. As a teacher, it should be a natural part of the lesson to show your students how they might vary the instructions and make the piece their own. And ethically, it would be appropriate for any student or jewelry designer to reference the source of their ideas, if not their own, or not primarily their own.

This issue percolates to the surface every couple of years. Most notably was the shot heard around the world, when the editor, Mindy Brookes, at Bead & Button magazine wrote an editorial (June 2006 issue) about “When, if ever, is it acceptable to sell or teach another person’s designs?

From the editorial:

That’s a question we hear frequently at Bead & Button, and it tells us that many of our readers care about the ethical and legal issues involved when it comes to the money-making aspects of beading. Unfortunately, we also have first hand experience with beading’s darker side — the dishonest few who cause heartache and financial harm by cashing, in on another person’s original work. And when unethical people profit from ideas that don’t belong to them, it hurts us all.

Maybe it was inevitable that as beading became more popular, people would look for shortcuts to exploit the growing number of lucrative opportunities, and maybe there is nothing one editor one editorial can do to change that. So, it’s gratifying to know that my concerns about the ethics of beading are shared by the editors of other beading magazines, including Cathy Jakicic of BeadStyle, Marlene Blessing of Beadwork, Pamela Hawkins of BeadUnique, and Leslie Rogalski of Step by Step Beads. They will also be covering this topic in upcoming issues of their publications.

To address the question presented at the start of this editorial, Bead & Button’s position on copying designs is as follows:

  1. It is unethical to copy an artist’s work to sell without the artist’s permission.
  2. It is unethical to copy any work that has appeared in a magazine, book, or website and represent it in any venue as an original design.
  3. It is unethical to teach a beading project that has appeared in a magazine, book, or website without the artist’s permission.
  4. It is unethical to teach a beading project learned in another teacher’s class without the teacher’s permission.

If you agree, please help disseminate this message by including a copy of these statements with your class materials, your kits, and the pieces you sell. You can download a copyright-free version at beadandbutton.com.

The reactions of our customers, teachers and students in the store were strong, worried, concerned, angry, frustrated, soul-searching, and very questioning of the Bead & Button manifesto. The primary concern was that most people liked to try out the patterns in the magazine. Was this unethical? Many teachers took cues from the magazines about fun projects to teach. Was this now unethical?

How much, in percent, of a project would have to have been copied, to suggest that this copying was unethical?

If determining the correct percentage, what did you count? Color? Bead? Style? Stringing material? Pattern?

How many original designs can people truly come up with? What if the originators were some tribal or provincial group hundreds of years ago? With 54,000,000 people who bead or design jewelry in the United States, how many original ideas can there actually be?

What if someone created an important variation on someone else’s design? Who’s project would the project be, and would that variation have to be suppressed?

Should there be a distinction between “copying” and “learning new techniques”?

How could anyone find out what was already copyrighted in jewelry? Copyrights are filed by title, not design elements. There is no searchable database. There are so many books and magazines and so many hundreds of years of beading.

I had read of a court battle in Washington State of a glass artist suing two of his apprentices, who went off and started their own business. The original artist claimed that he had sole rights to create certain curvatures in glass. Can you really copyright or patent a curvature in glass — how many curvatures can there be, before the glass breaks? The original artist claimed that the work of the two apprentices was too similar to his own. To complicate the situation, the original artist had been physically unable to make his own pieces. He designed them, oversaw the work of the apprentices, and signed the pieces. If the original artist were to win in court, would this force all other glass artists out of business, because they would no longer have the rights to make certain curvatures in glass?

By trying to clarify the issue, I think Bead & Button muddied the water more. They confused the moral value of copying someone else’s work, with the legal value of copyrighted material.

What I say:

1. Don’t be a jewelry designer, teacher or craft-writer, if you don’t want people to copy your work.

2. Don’t copy someone else’s work and sell it or teach it, without at least referencing or acknowledging your source material.

3. When teaching or designing based on someone else’s work, set a goal for yourself to try to “make it your own”, by personalizing or varying the piece.

Other Articles of Interest by Warren Feld:

Should I Set Up My Craft Business On A Marketplace Online?

The Importance of Self-Promotion: Don’t Be Shy

Are You Prepared For When The Reporter Comes A-Calling?

A Fool-Proof Formula For Pricing And Selling Your Jewelry

Designer Connect Profile: Tony Perrin, Jewelry Designer

My Aunt Gert: Illustrating Some Lessons In Business Smarts

Copyrighting Your Pieces: Let’s Not Confuse The Moral With The Legal Issues

Naming Your Business / Naming Your Jewelry

Jewelry Making Materials: Knowing What To Do

To What Extent Should Business Concerns Influence Artistic and Jewelry Design Choices

How Creatives Can Successfully Survive In Business

Getting Started In Business: What You Do First To Make It Official

I hope you found this article useful. Be sure to click the CLAP HANDS icon at the bottom of this article.

Also, check out my website (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com).

Subscribe to my Learn To Bead blog (https://blog.landofodds.com).

Visit Land of Odds online (https://www.landofodds.com)for all your jewelry making supplies.

Enroll in my jewelry design and business of craft video tutorials online.

Add your name to my email list.

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Your Personal Style

Posted by learntobead on September 21, 2010

Your Personal Style

It’s always important to develop a personal style within your jewelry creations.   Something that helps people recognize that the jewelry was made by you, and not someone else.   A signature, or signifying element.

This can be a certain choice of colors.   It can be the addition of a special bead to each piece, or special dangle, or special tag.    It can be the use of a custom made clasp.    Or a certain style of construction.  Or the use of certain images, forms or motifs.

Carolyn Morris Bach is a jewelry artist from southern New England.     She has a very strong signature motif she uses:   tiny creatures with solemn or half-smiling, ovoid or moon-shaped faces carved from ivory or gemstones and the like.   Her pieces are mythical and allegorical, yet very contemporary.

She makes it very easy to associate her pieces with her.     This, in marketing terms, is a kind of branding.    When people see these motifs and styles, they automatically begin to associate the jewelry with Carolyn Morris Bach — even if someone else had created the piece.

Here are some of her pieces:

The piece above would be beautiful without the owl.    Or the “owl” element did not have to be a bird motif per se, but could have been anything.     By making that element an owl, and styling the owl as she did, her jewelry comes with her signature.   That’s important for all jewelry designers to do.

You can visit her website:
http://www.carolynmorrisbach.com/

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