BUSINESSES

Those who make jewelry know the importance of using quality materials. From the types of gemstones used in a piece, to the process in which it’s constructed, painstaking efforts are taken to ensure high quality of luxury goods. The piece’s presentation is pondered over and chosen meticulously.

The quality of your products is top priority. You only have one chance at a first impression with consumers, retailers and wholesalers. It’s essential that your first impression is an overwhelmingly positive one. For consumers, a lack of quality shows a lack of care. Luxury products are expected to be bought in luxurious condition. Anything less, and rest assured they won’t be purchasing from that company again.

Unfortunately, the devil is always in the LITTLE details. Jewelry making is a composite process that involves many different steps. One constant throughout the entire process is cleanliness and contaminants. The management of these pesky little details can determine whether jewelry is top quality.

Here are three things to keep in mind when you think of contaminants.

DISTILLED WATER

Distilled water is created through the process of distillation. Water - like almost anything else in nature - holds onto contaminants. Many of the contaminants found in water are corrosive. When put through the distillation process, the contaminants are removed and you’re left with pure H20.

Why am I telling you this? Because the use of distilled water in the jewelry process is important. Depending on the jewelry making process, the final product is often rinsed and dried. If unpure or undistilled water is used, contaminants could be left on the final product. This is one of those small details that could easily be overlooked, but could make all the difference.

GLOVES

Enter “jewelry making” into any search engine and you may find a common pattern...no one is wearing gloves! This is fairly uncommon. The vast majority of retail groups recommend that their vendors wear gloves during the pack-out process. Again, this goes back to the idea of those pesky little contaminants.

Someone who isn’t wearing gloves can touch and number of things in between their work. This can lead to imperfections in the final jewelry product. What’s more, someone wearing the wrong type of gloves can cause even more damage.

Any gloves worn during the final stages of the jewelry packaging process should be unbleached cotton gloves. This ensures that no contaminants will make their way from the materials of the glove to the final jewelry product. It also ensures a happy customer!

PACKAGING

This category must be considered for items both entering and exiting the manufacturing facility. Some packaging contains sulfur and chlorine chemicals embedded in their materials. This necessitates the cleaning of materials upon entering the facility.

Once the final product is finished, you want to ensure that your jewelry is contained in packaging that will neutralize contaminants. In transit and storage, it will be exposed to all types of air pollution like exhaust fumes and hydrogen sulfide, which continues to produce negative physical reactions in the jewelry.