The Basic Metallurgy of Precious Metals: Important Considerations for the Bench and the Consumer
Do not underestimate the importance of having metals behave in a consistent and predictable manner at the bench and during regular wear. A bad casting, an overly soft alloy, or a piece that has simply been cold-worked too long can result in scrap and rework, causing potential downstream problems for both your clients and profitability.
In this session, we will look at the far-reaching effects of metallurgical quality on the performance of a jewelry item. We will discuss porosity, microstructure, mechanical strength, and the effects of alloying elements, as well as best practices for high-quality metallurgical outcomes.
The issue or problem we will address in the session: Insufficient information regarding the root causes of failures in precious metal castings that can cost jewelers unnecessary time, expense, and reputation.
This session provides:
Your shop should be a profit center. Learn how to price your custom work and repairs for the profits you deserve. David will remind you that repairs are not PRICE sensitive, they are TRUST sensitive. Find out if you are charging enough for your labor and your trust factor. Learn from this industry guru how to make sure you correctly value your worth and the services you provide!
In this session, you will learn:
You know your custom jewelry is worth more than the sum of its parts, but it can be difficult to present its value in ways that consumers understand and embrace. The key to high perceived value is to start long before the inquiry or sale. In this session, you will learn the techniques used by luxury businesses around the world to establish a strong value story through messaging, sales, and presentation. Get beyond how you cost and price your work and start realizing the margins your custom work deserves.
Luxury businesses have long known how to sell the idea that a purse can be more than just a purse, and a pair of shoes can be more than just a pair of shoes. Yet, some of the most impressive luxury experiences are offered by small local sellers — not multinational giants — proving that you don’t have to be an international brand to pull this off. This session will teach you how to make your store brand and custom jewelry purchasing experience work for you by increasing perceived value and finding ways to dissuade buyers from their inclination to haggle for a better price.
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You work hard for your money, so it’s important that you don't allow hidden inefficiencies rob you of even a fraction of your profits. In Lean Manufacturing, we call these inefficiencies waste, and waste can be found in everything from equipment maintenance problems to poorly maintained tools, to problems with workflow, or even poor ergonomics. In this session, you’ll learn how to do a production environment audit, then tackle the problems you identify. Take these lessons straight from the session to the shop, and you’ll be improving efficiencies (and therefore profits) immediately.
The jewelry business comes with high cash demands, and cash flow problems weigh on most jewelry business owners. This session helps owners and shop managers identify and eliminate internal problems that rob them of cash and slow down their operations.
Lean Manufacturing is a set of disciplines that has long been credited with improving manufacturing speed, quality, and performance. But most Lean Manufacturing programs are geared to more complex manufacturing operations. Andrea Hill has been breaking down Lean Manufacturing for the jewelry shop environment for nearly 15 years, taking the most valuable aspects of Lean and showing small shop owners how to gain value from a handful of basic, down-to-earth practices.
Andrea Hill will cover the basics of how to reduce unnecessary movement and increase productivity, how to find shop bottlenecks and what to do when you find them, how to perform a quarterly shop audit to identify opportunities for improvement, and how to transform the term continuous improvement from a thing people say to a thing people do.
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Jewelry manufacturers increasingly are integrating digital casting models into their production processes with a wide variety of machines and materials from which to choose. There is a significant body of evidence, both anecdotal and documented, indicating that digital model materials have varying degrees of success in casting. The root causes of related defects are not well understood, leaving the industry plagued with speculation and a variety of homegrown methods aimed at addressing these problems.
This presentation will share original research using controlled studies to understand the casting behaviors of several model materials, including an evaluation of dimensional movement experienced by these materials when subjected to firing. In addition, we will show how we track related casting defects to their root causes through observations of defect size and shape.
In this session, you will learn how to optimize product quality when casting with digital models, and
