Affordability: From silver costs, to suppliers, to advertisements for a Muncie jewelry maker
Audio Transcript
In preparation for Mother’s Day, Heidi Hale, Founder of HeidiJHale Designs, would typically face online challenges, including not getting enough orders in early enough.
“We are living in an Amazon Prime world, but what we have to remind them is we’re either taking a loved one’s handwriting, thumbprint, [or] picture, and we’re creating something from scratch,” Hale said. “Nothing is mass produced.”
However, the challenges she faces throughout the rest of the year have become more significant. When she began making jewelry over 25 years ago, the cost of an ounce of silver was around $6. Now, it’s $73 to $78 an ounce.
The prices have been driven up by the need for silver in electronics and solar panels, as well as by people turning to hard assets like silver as the purchasing power of the US dollar weakens, according to Stefan Gleason, the president of an online precious metals business headquartered in Idaho. The cost of silver had peaked at around $115 in late January, but has since declined. However, Hale says her prices reflect what suppliers are charging.
“And so, it makes it hard because our suppliers aren’t bringing it down as fast as silver per ounce has come down for the market,” Hale said.
Premade blank bracelets, rings, and earrings bought to be engraved at the store have either increased in cost or are no longer being produced. This has led Hale and her employees to make their own.
“They’re carrying less and less chains, products that we would typically purchase. So, then we are pivoting.”
Victoria Stout is a solderer at the store. She is making cross earrings that were once bought from a manufacturer and are now being made in-house.
“They just sold out of them, or they just stopped selling them like within relatively recently,” Stout said. “And we’ve had a couple customers come in and have us remake them and they turned out really good. So, we just kept making them.”
Beyond the costs of silver and suppliers, HeidiJHale Designs faces another problem: social media ads. Hale has amassed a large audience on Facebook with over 613,000 followers.
“Now, I have to pay at least like $100 per 5,000 followers that I want to see my piece. Like they don’t even see my stuff,” Hale said. “So, between the silver prices and the social media billionaires wanting more because they’re starting to lose money, it’s just like…I’m tired.”
The pressure from social media is partly why they started recycling their own scrap silver years ago. According to Hale, when they started recycling, sales were down, and they were paying Facebook $1,000,000 a year for advertising. Melting scrap for casting or rolling it into a sheet has helped them manage silver costs.
Hale’s husband and business partner, Sean Hale, has said it was a “no-brainer.” They save between $2,000 and $4,000 a month by recycling and making our own sheets and laser-cutting pieces out of them.
“And it didn’t used to be cost-effective. Silver was priced at a point where we could go ahead and buy sheet and not have to make it ourselves. But silver has almost tripled in price, and because of that, we’ve looked for alternative ways to do this. This is something we could have been doing all along, but it is labor-intensive, but at the same time, it’s saving us that amount per month,” Sean Hale said.
Heidi Hale expects they will make about 10,000 pieces of jewelry for Mother’s Day. The National Retail Federation says Americans are expected to spend $7.5 billion on jewelry as gifts for the holiday.
And as HeidiJHale Designs moves forward, she says she will keep adjusting.
“It has always been for me the last 25 years, pivoting. Something happens, you pivot,” Hale said.
Daniel Huber is a news fellow with Ball State Public Media’s Public Media Accelerator student fellowships.
