Creating A Brand For Your Handmade Jewellery Business

This is your chance to turn your jewellery making hobby into a successful business!

Building a jewellery brand is such an exciting part of your handmade jewellery business and one of the most important things you need to focus on to succeed. This is your chance to get your beautiful creations out into the world by creating a consistent and solid brand that your customers will know and love.

You may already have an online presence or maybe you're already selling your jewellery without putting much thought into your overall brand? Either way, we hope this blog post helps you to either start from scratch or help you make those finishing touches to your brand.

What is a brand?

A brand is an identity you create for your business. Creating a brand for your handmade jewellery business is so important as it helps your customers recognise you through the use of imagery, tone of voice, colours, style and more.

If your brand is inconsistent this can make you look unprofessional. For example, if each of your platforms such as website, social media and marketing materials have different colours, imagery, logos etc. this can confuse potential customers and will make it easy to forget you.

By remaining consistent with the overall image of your business, customers will instantly recognise it is your business and will be more likely to make a purchase.

Start with your customers

Whether you already sell your jewellery at craft fairs, online or to your friends this gives you a great starting place to understand what elements of your jewellery stand out to others.

Don't be afraid to ask others what they think of your jewellery, what makes you stand out from other jewellers, how they would describe your designs and how the jewellery makes them feel. All this information is great for understanding your product and will help you build a brand that fits with your style. 

Without your customers, your business simply wouldn't work - so you need to ensure your brand meets your customer perception and keeps them coming back for more.

Create a mood board

Next, it's time to to get your ideas and knowledge down on paper to create a mood board.

You already have a good idea of what style of jewellery you make, what your customers think and what inspires your designs - giving you a great starting place for finding your brand. The aim of this mood board is to combine all the elements of your business together to form one cohesive visual of your business.

Whether you want to create a mood board on your computer or a physical board of textures and images on your kitchen table, the choice is yours. 

What to include in your brand board

• Words describing and relating to your business - what makes you different and unique?
• Colours relating to your business
• Fonts which represent your business
• Lifestyle and photography - use your own photos of your jewellery
• Images of what inspires your designs

Creating a logo

Your logo will be the main image that represents your business and should be used on all platforms and marketing materials so customers can instantly identify you. It could be a simple typography image, illustration or photograph. The choice is yours but ensure that the logo suits your handmade jewellery and ties in with your overall aesthetic.

If you don't have access to Photoshop, there are great resources online such as Canva which is a great tool to help you design easy logos, business cards, graphics and more.

Read our blog post on creating a logo for your handmade jewellery business.

Choosing fonts to represent your brand

Choose only one or two fonts and use these on all of your marketing materials such as business cards, website, social media graphics and newsletters. There are plenty of fonts to choose from and you can use online resources to help you such as Google Fonts, 1001 Free Fonts and Da Font, providing you with free fonts to use on your platforms. You can install these onto your computer and use them for creating graphics etc.

It is best to choose one font that will be your main font such as the key text on your website which is easy and clear to read. Your other font could be a handwritten style font which you could use on your graphics for social media but ensure that this is also easy to read.

When picking your fonts, always keep in mind your branding and whether the fonts are suitable.

Create a brand story

When creating your brand, take time to write down what makes your business and jewellery stand out from the crowd. Whether that's making everything handmade, being based in a certain location, what you're inspired by. Create a brand story that includes your selling points, why people should choose your jewellery over someone else's along with your goals and aims.

Where did you love for making jewellery start, how did you get to where you are today, what did you want to achieve when starting a business. Use all this information to help you develop your brand story.

Tone of voice

Is your business friendly, formal, quirky? Your tone of voice is how you interact with your customers online and at craft fairs, how you write your website content, product descriptions and social media posts. These platforms should all sound like it's coming from the same person.

One of the best things about having your own business as a jeweller is that you can just be yourself, people love seeing the jeweller behind the jewellery so don't be afraid to show off your personality in your business. Whether that's through sharing your story, writing behind the scenes blog posts or going into detail about the design you've made.

Name your business

The name of your business shouldn't just be a random name. You need to think carefully about how this name fits in with your brand - don't be afraid of getting a little experimental and asking family or friends for their thoughts.

Click here to read our blog post on how to choose a name for your handmade business.

Create your brand guidelines

Once you have your ideas in place, it's time to put them all together in one place to ensure that you're happy with your brand. You could write these down in a notebook or create a more visual guide online that you can print off and refer to regularly to ensure you are following your brand guidelines.

You could include...

• Business name
• Logo and variations (this could be black and white versions, a png and jpeg)
• Your tagline
• Colour palette
• Brand statement (description of your brand and values)
• Typography and fonts
• Tone of voice
• Imagery and photography style

Allow room to grow

No doubt you want your business to grow and continue for as long as possible, so take this into consideration when creating your brand. 

This identity you have created should remain consistent and you don't want to look back in ten years time hating it! Of course, that doesn't mean you can't update your website, give your social media a tidy up or update your business cards in the future. You want to be able to evolve as your business grows but keep the same style, feel and look throughout your changes.

Be authentic

When creating an identity for your business, enjoy the process and always stay authentic and true to yourself. If you love the brand you've created and you feel it truly it suits you and your jewellery, you will be confident in marketing and growing your business.

Update your online presence and marketing materials

Once you have your branding in place, begin to update your online platforms such as social media, website, newsletter headers, business cards etc.

You will soon see that all of your hard work has paid off, and you've created a brilliant identity to your handmade business. Update your profile pictures as your logo, update your fonts and colours on your website and analyse your wording to fit your tone of voice. Your packaging also needs to meet your brand guidelines, whether you keep it simple or get experimental with textures and added touches. 

Get help

There is so much help and guidance out there to help you build your business. For example, you could hire a marketing expert to create brand guidelines for your business, a graphic designer to help build your logo or a web developer to update or create your website. If you're limited by budget, there is nothing stopping you from creating your brand yourself - all you'll need is a bit of creativity and patience!