Last month when Ashley and I were doing inventory we really ‘took inventory” of what wire & findings we were really using these days. When you are a jewelry designer I think you tend to hang on to things “just in case”.
Misc. Findings
This is not necessarily smart business as you end up carrying irrelevant inventory and in the case of Tennessee, you have to pay personalty taxes on it. I used to use 18Kt & 14Kt gold components and when I bought them, the gold prices weren’t as high as they are now. I decided to scrap perfectly good irrelevant findings so that I would reap the benefits of the price hike and be able to make that money work for me. I have only ever scraped at Rio Grande. They will either give you cash for gold of different karat weight, argentium or silver or issue a credit to be used with them.
The hitch is that if you ask for cash, you get less than you would if you got the credit. Since I use Rio Grande for a lot of findings, the credit makes good sense for me. I was able to get my first two regular first-of-the-year orders from this credit. At this time of year that really helps as it’s a slow time for us. I even splurged with my credit and got some new awesome acrylic blocks like these for my showroom:
Acrylic Display Blocks
So, if you have stuff lying around that you aren’t using in your everyday production- separate it into each of the metal grades- neatly and send it to Rio attn. returns department. Be sure to include your account number and if you don’t have one, definitely get one. Their materials are high quality. And the additional benefit is that you also de-clutter and that feels as good as cleaning out your closets, truly! We feel like we have a cleaner slate as we are able to find the things we use more easily in our physical components storage as well as in our computerized inventory. Out with the old, in with the new!
Tags: findings, inventory, jewelry designer, personalty taxes, rio grande, scrap metal
