Russian jewelry market
Every woman wants to look attractive, but not everyone has the opportunity and desire to spend a lot of money on expensive jewelry. In this case, jewelry comes to the rescue: such jewelry is characterized by a variety of designs and colors and a low price. However, jewelry on the Russian market varies greatly in price. In total, experts identify three main price segments. Products of the lowest price segment cost less than 500 rubles per product. Fashion jewelry of the middle price category will cost fashionistas in the amount of up to 1500-2000 rubles per unit. And the so-called "jewelry" can well be compared in value with relatively simple jewelry made of precious metals (over 1500-2000 rubles). The most popular among buyers is cheap jewelry. She leads in the number of products sold. And in cost terms, jewelry of the middle price category wins (its sales account for slightly less than half of the total).
In the jewelry market in our country, imported products predominate. According to various sources, its share is from 60 to 80%. However, the latter figure seems more plausible. At the same time, counterfeit products imported from China and Turkey occupy a large share. It is cheap, it is a rough copy of jewelry of famous brands and is of rather low quality. Also in the segment of cheap jewelry are Afghan, Syrian and Indian products. The margin on such jewelry reaches 300%. Cheap jewelry is sold in stalls, in small retail outlets and in markets. In addition, they can be purchased in numerous groups on social networks (mainly VKontakte).
Mid-range products are also produced mainly in China, although labeling may indicate otherwise. As a rule, the design of such jewelry is developed, in fact, in Italy or France, but it is made in Chinese or Korean factories. By the way, the latter can produce collections under their own brands. You can buy such products in shopping centers, in department stores, in specialized (and company) stores, in online stores. Such jewelry is imported not only from China, but also from the countries of Eastern (Poland) and Western (France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy) Europe.
Expensive jewelry is made by companies that own expensive brands of clothing and perfumes. You can buy them only in company stores at a price of several thousand rubles.
The only major Russian jewelry manufacturer is Etalon-Zhenavi CJSC. The turnover of the company, whose production facilities are located in St. Petersburg, according to experts, is more than $ 35 million per year. 20% of its products are exported to European countries, and 10% to the CIS countries. The jewelry market is growing rapidly - about 35% every year.
Most in demand among buyers are hair accessories, bracelets and necklaces. Despite the fact that the volume of this market is already estimated by experts at $ 3 billion, it is still far from saturation (especially when it comes to products of medium and high price categories).
It is profitable not only to sell jewelry, but also to produce it. Of course, the amounts necessary to start a business in the first and second cases will differ significantly from each other, like profit and profitability.
Materials for the production of jewelry
A large number of different materials are used for the production of modern jewelry - glass, metal, plastic, base stones, wood and even textiles. The components of the majority of jewelry sold in our country: plastic, Czech crystal, jewelry rope, beads (including the more expensive options - lampfork and millefiori), pins and earrings, waxed cords, clamping beads, wire, felt and felt, metal accessories, fishing line, etc. The most common plastic jewelry. Plastic is a modern synthetic material, which, with the help of special additives, is given various properties. It is perfectly painted in bulk, so that its color scheme is practically unlimited. In addition, it is relatively strong, durable and cheap.
Czech crystal is used to produce not only inexpensive jewelry, but also jewelry. Using various additives, it is possible to produce crystal beads of various degrees of transparency, gloss and different colors.
A jewelry cable is the basis for jewelry (necklace or bracelet). It is a weave of a large number of thin wires that are enclosed in a plastic shell of various colors. Also, a thin fishing line made of plastic, a metal wire of silver or golden color or a waxed cord - twisted and waxed linen rope of various thicknesses and colors can be used as a basis. Felt is made by dumping down, and felt is made from wool.
The latter material is more rigid. Both felt and felt are used to make hats, bags, brooches and pendants.
In mid-range jewelry, mainly glass beads are used, which are produced in large quantities at specialized factories. And in products more expensive, their various varieties are used. These include lampwork beads, which are made from Venetian glass in a twisted way in ovens at high temperatures, and millefiori beads, which are made from soft Venetian glass using a glass rod. Such production is very time-consuming, as it is carried out manually, so jewelry with such components is relatively expensive. To fix the beads, pins are used - carnations with various tips. Elements made of stones (for example, zirconium), rhinestones and pearls are attached using earrings.
Together with a jewelry cable, so-called crimps are used - clamping beads that give shape to the product (which is especially important for bracelets and necklaces). As a rule, metal fittings are made of bronze, brass, copper and various alloys.
Of course, manufacturers of jewelry usually do not produce all the components for their products, but purchase them from specialized wholesale companies in China and Europe. Sometimes brass and steel fittings undergo additional processing (matting, blacking, plating with gold, silver, copper or rhodium in natural or aged form), depending on the initial design of the product. In quality jewelry, which for the most part consists of metal parts, special coatings are used (made of gold, silver or rhodium), which prevent direct contact of the allergenic metal with human skin. The base metal is applied mainly in two ways - by spraying and using the galvanic method. Spraying gives products a beautiful shine and shade, but does not create a durable layer. Therefore, such products are cheaper and less wear-resistant. The galvanic method allows you to apply a relatively large coating layer, which ensures its strength and durability.
In modern jewelry, the so-called rhodium plating is often used. Rhodium is a precious metal of the platinum group. It is used in alloys with platinum, used as a coating for mirror surfaces in devices. The price of rhodium is more expensive than platinum, however, its consumption in the manufacture of jewelry is lower, since this metal is the hardest among precious metals. Chinese manufacturers often use toxic nickel to simulate rhodium, which is a strong allergen and is banned for use in European countries.
Sometimes, instead of rhodium, another precious platinum group metal, palladium, is used to cover the product. It is obtained from a solution of platinum and its satellites (rhodium, iridium) during purification.
Jewelery Production Technology
Buyers often compare the prices of products from base metals and stones with the cost of jewelry made of gold and silver and are often surprised at their high cost. Experts explain the high cost of quality jewelry with its design and style. A large number of people participate in the creation of one piece of jewelry, including highly paid designers, stylists, technologists and other specialists. And even despite this, the cost of the most expensive jewelry is still lower than the similar in quality, but simpler in appearance jewelry. Since jewelry is made from base metals, manufacturers do not need to worry about reducing production waste, and they can implement any design ideas without significantly increasing the price of the product.
The production of such jewelry consists of the same basic stages as the production of jewelry: cutting, casting and stamping. Finishes it by hand polishing. Consider these steps in more detail. As in the case of the manufacture of jewelry made of precious metals, technological operations in the manufacture of jewelry are divided into basic and finishing. The main ones include melting, casting, stamping, rolling, annealing, drawing, chain binding, degreasing, soldering, washing and drying. Finishing operations may vary, depending on the type and design of the product. For example, if we are talking about chains, then the finishing work in their manufacture consists in chipping, softening, pressing, cutting, assembling or terminating.
Rings are ground and polished, matted, coated with various compositions, etc. Melting is a technological process in which metal ingots are transferred under the influence of high temperatures from solid to molten. In modern factories, continuous induction furnaces are used for this.
Casting is a technological process of forming a product from a liquid alloy in a special form. It, in turn, consists of several operations. First, a master model is made of solid metal manually with a melting point above 300 degrees Celsius. It turns out a little more than the finished product, which should result in the end, taking into account the shrinkage of the rubber mold and the waste that occurs when filing and polishing the finished product. Then the rubber mold itself is made. This will require a master model, molding crude rubber, a vulcanizing press and a metal flask. Then a wax model is made. To do this, the rubber mold is filled with special molten wax. After that, a wax Christmas tree is made: wax models are soldered to a wax gate with a diameter of up to 7 mm using an electric soldering iron. With the help of this "Christmas tree" make molds. The herringbone is placed in a flask and filled with a refractory gypsum mixture. Then the wax is smelted from the mold by heating the mold. At the next stage, metal is poured into the flask by rotation of the mold or by vacuum absorption. Finally, the castings are cleaned manually or in an ultrasonic bath and disassembled.
In order to obtain sheets or shaped products of different thicknesses, an operation such as rolling or rolling is used. In this case, the metal is passed several times through the rotating rolls of the rolling mill. Using this equipment, you can make a plate with a thickness of about 1 mm and a thin wire of round and square cross-section. Since a decrease in diameter changes the structure of the alloy, which makes it brittle, annealing is used to restore the strength of the metal. This procedure, which consists in heating the alloy to a certain temperature, keeping it at this temperature and cooling, is applied after each change in the diameter of the semi-finished product. For cooling, the product either remains in the muffle plate until it cools completely, or is removed from it and cooled at room temperature.
After annealing, the plates are sent to stamping, and the rods are sent to the drawing operation. When stamping materials are processed by pressure. The workpiece under the stamp is deformed - a drawing engraved on the stamp is pressed out on it. Products with complex shapes are stamped in several stages, between which they are annealed to restore the strength of the metal.
Drawing is called a procedure, as a result of which a round wire with a certain diameter is obtained (usually less than 0.1 mm). It is pulled through the holes of the dies with uniform tension. In this case, the dies are lubricated with an oil-based mixture so that the wire does not overheat and break. The result should be a product of a certain diameter, which then goes to annealing.
Chains and woven bracelets are made from the resulting wire in a separate chain knitting workshop. There are special machines that allow you to produce products of various weaves at a speed of up to 500 links per minute. A long chain with unsealed links is washed, degreased and soldered. In order to solder the ends of the chain, an installation for applying solder is used, which is equipped with two drums. The long chain on the bobbin is first treated with a special powder, and then fed to the soldering furnace. Previously, this procedure was carried out manually, but nowadays, masters use a hand-held soldering iron only for fixing individual small parts.
Finished products are polished to a shine; if necessary, they undergo additional cleaning and are packaged.
Jewelery Business
Most European companies that supply jewelry, place their production in China, due to the low cost of labor in this country. On the one hand, this allows to reduce production costs, but is fraught with deterioration of product quality. Strict control helps maintain quality at the proper level, but it is unlikely that they can completely avoid problems and difficulties. However, organizing our own production in our country also does not seem appropriate. Although this niche is practically empty in Russia. Domestic products account for less than 10% of the market, according to Finam. Moreover, most of these ten percent are small semi-artisan firms whose level of production does not differ from cheap Chinese jewelry at a higher price.
Experts believe that even with the necessary investments (and the opening of a full-fledged jewelry production in Russia will require more than a dozen million rubles), such production will not be profitable. It is much more profitable to purchase finished products at Chinese factories or to make decorations there, but according to your sketches. In this case, it is quite possible to start a business, as experienced entrepreneurs claim, having about 500 thousand rubles. However, the main difficulty lies not in the starting capital, but in the search for talented designers and stylists who can “predict” the demand of consumers and offer exactly what they need. And, of course, how you promote your products is of great importance. Fame in the fashion industry (and not only in it) directly affects sales, so the advertising budgets of large jewelry manufacturers are calculated in amounts with a large number of zeros.
Sysoeva Lilia
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