When you're wearing it, you're wearing art

Until this month, I had been selling my hand-painted jewelry on consignment at a couple of galleries in North Carolina and at the gift shop at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai, Hawaii. The sales were slow and I finally came to the conclusion that women are more likely to buy my jewelry if it's available in a boutique or gift shop where clothing is also sold. So, I decided to start selling my jewelry on a wholesale basis only, to nicer boutiques and gift shops. To that end, I created some POP (point-of-purchase) and jewelry display materials, came up with a tagline, designed a two-page web site, ARHallDesign.com, designed and ordered some new business cards, put a whole lot of new jewelry pieces together using some new glass I found that I like better than what I was using before, and set out to make my first sale.

This past Friday, I took a large selection of my jewelry and my POP and display materials to a very nice gift shop here in Salisbury, NC, called Stitchin' Post Gifts. They really liked my unique jewelry and purchased a nice selection, more pieces than I've sold previously as a whole on consignment! It was quite encouraging. I hope their customers like my jewelry so much that it sells out quickly and I get a call for replenishment.

One thing I learned from Pam Coffield, the owner of Stitchin' Post Gifts, and her staff, is that silver is the "in" color for jewelry. Gold isn't as popular. So, my latest collection, Swirly Gig IV, has only silver bails on the pendants, and the color scheme of the acrylic painting from which all the pieces were created was painted with silver in mind.

My next step is to continue to build my jewelry inventory with beautiful new pieces created from new paintings, and make the rounds to gift shops and boutiques all over North Carolina, and then on to the surrounding states. As an added incentive, I am giving shops who want my jewelry exclusive rights to sell it in their local area. I like selling on a wholesale basis much better than on consignment. You get paid up front!

If you have any nice boutiques or gift shops in your town where you think my jewelry would be a good fit, I would be very grateful for the referral.

Below is a sample of some 2" pendants from my new Swirly Gig IV collection. As my new tagline explains, "When you're wearing it, you're wearing art."

Samples from Annette Ragone Hall's "Swirly Gig IV" jewelry collection