How to find body jewellery suppliers for your piercing studio

For piercing studios and body jewellery stores, the mission when it comes to sourcing their products is not merely about filling up their inventory with the latest trends, but it’s about safeguarding the health of their customers and maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction by providing jewellery which lasts a long time.

Body piercing jewellery isn’t just an accessory, it adorns the body and is an object a customer will be wearing for a prolonged period. This means low-quality jewellery could have terrible consequences for the customers. Therefore, when searching for reliable body jewellery suppliers, looking trendy is just part of the equation, the quality of the products is even more important. This is a critical aspect of maintaining the integrity and reputation of a body piercing studio. You must also look at the  cost, since the business must be able to cover their costs and provide the owners with an acceptable income.

Luckily, these days, all reputable businesses should have an online presence, so the easiest way to find potential suppliers for your company is through searching the internet. However, being on the first or second page of the results is no indication whatsoever of the quality of the jewellery or the suitability of a supplier for your business. It is merely an indication of the marketing effort that the company has made.

All the suppliers we see should fall into one of these three main categories.

Different types of body jewellery suppliers

Factories: 90% of all piercing jewellery sold worldwide is manufactured in China. So, unless you are looking for high-end body jewellery, this will mean that you must deal with Chinese factories. However,  this option is not feasible for most business owners due to the high minimum order requirements. Also, most Chinese jewellery factories target the very low end of the market, and their quality and consistency are rather poor.

Ultimately, working with Chinese body jewellery factories has too many potential problems to be worth it for most small and medium-sized piercing studios.

Wholesale body jewellery supply websites: There are a wide choice of online body jewellery suppliers who sell their products through their websites, making it very convenient for business owners to access the extensive product selection and affordable prices these companies offer. However, many of these wholesale companies sell overpriced products from China, and often, their service quality is not that great. The great advantage these sites offer is that it’s often possible to buy any products without minimum order quantities, which makes them accessible to all types of business owners.

Your local body piercing jewellery supplier: In most big cities, you can find traditional wholesale body jewelkery companies that operate through a showroom or a catalogue. These traditional wholesalers can be a good starting point for newcomers to the piercing jewellery industry since the insights provided by the owners of these shops can be considered invaluable for somebody just learning the ropes. Buying from a physical shop with a legal presence in your country means that if the products are of low quality and cause issues for your customers, you can take legal action against your supplier. The fact that this is possible means they are the less likely to sell  body jewellery that is not compliant with legal requirements in your own country.

How to assess the reliability of a body piercing jewellery supplier

Assessing suppliers’ reliability is a crucial skill for any piercing studio or body jewellery store owner.

Below is a quick checklist of attributes good piercing suppliers should have.

• Their website should show contact information, including physical address, phone number, and a contact us form or email address.
• Their website should clearly indicate the owner with his name.
• Check the reputation of the owner on places like Linkedin or Industry publications.
• The website should show material certificates with recent dates. Anything older than one or two years is a bad sign.
• Read through the website to see if any apparent mistakes indicate their lack of knowledge of piercing jewellery, for instance, stating that their 316L steel is nickel-free. The fact is that 316L steel must contain between 10% – 14% Nickel, and the critical aspect in relation to health is that the products comply with the nickel release directive for body piercing articles and is below 0.2 ug/cm2/week.
• Check the reviews both on their website and on Google. Do not look at the good reviews but instead focus on the negative ones to see the reason the customer to left a bad review and how the company handled the problem.
• Check their return policy. If they have faith in their own quality, they will offer at least a 30- 90-day money-back guarantee for defective products.

Red flags.

If you spot any of these, consider looking for other suppliers, and do not risk your money.

• Bad reviews not responded to, these show that the company does not care about its customers once they have paid for their orders.
• Slow to reply: any company selling online should reply to customers within 24 hours during working days.
• Bad communication: If you get a bad feeling when communicating with a potential supplier, trust your gut instinct and don’t risk your money. Most of the time, when sales or customer employees do not care about their customers, the quality of the products will not be good.
• Obvious, misleading statements on their website: For instance, if a company announces itself as a factory and doesn’t show pictures of its manufacturing equipment on its website, it could mean they are pretending to be a factory and are actually reselling low-quality items bought cheaply from China. This type of company will likely also be dishonest in other aspects of your business relationship with them.
• Check the products they sell. If they sell any products that are considered dangerous to customers by professional piercers, it means they put profits before the well-being of the customer.
• If you see a lot of advertising online for a company, this often means that the company is trying hard to replace previous, non returning, customers with new ones to maintain sales. All this marketing costs a lot of money, which can either result in higher prices or lower quality. Neither of which is good for you.
• Be aware that however long a wholesale company has been operating is not necessarily a good indicator of the quality of their products. Some low-quality jewellery suppliers have been operating for decades, and some shops look for precisely low-quality products at very cheap prices.

How to get started buying body jewellery once you have chosen a supplier.

Good things take time to mature, and the relationship with a body jewellery supplier is no different. You should start with a small sample order of basic items or, if possible, ask for a free sample, to evaluate product quality. Once you receive the items, evaluate the different quality aspects of the piercing jewellery.

How is the polish? This is often the first aspect you will appreciate; you should try to analyse it methodically by inspecting the jewelley from all angles and focusing mainly on problem points such as the attachment of the labret post to the labret disk. It is in these problematic areas that you will be able to see the difference between low- and good-quality body jewellery.

How is the threading? Even though you might only sell internally threaded body jewellery in your shop, you should still order a few externally threaded pieces to analyse the threading. Threading should be cut nicely without any burrs or machining marks and, when assembling, should be able to be screwed smoothly until tight.

What is the quality of the crystals used? In particular,  with Clear and AB colours, you should be able to see clearly if the quality of the crystals is acceptable to you.

What is the quality of the setting of the crystals and stones?

How is the labelling and packing of the items you have received? If they look like they have just been thrown into the box and mailed to you, it certainly doesn’t invite you to go continue with that company.

How was the communication with the piercing jewellery supplier?

Calculate the total cost of the purchase, including any shipping cost and import taxes you might have had to pay, and calculate your final cost to decide if it would make economic sense for your business to purchase larger quantities from this supplier.

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