Small town business owners

Whilst a lot of jewellers provide in-house jewellery repair services, there are many situations in which it is better for jewellers to outsource the repair of their customers' broken jewellery pieces. Here are some specific situations where outsourcing would be better.

1. The jeweller has a minimal amount of experience with repairing jewellery 

If a jeweller has only taken one or two jewellery repair workshops and has not actually fixed a lot of damaged jewellery over the course of their career, then it would probably be wiser for them to outsource this part of their business. Whilst the outsourcing of this particular service might cut into their profits a bit, it could actually improve their customer retention rates in the long run. The reason for this is as follows; whilst a jeweller with very little experience in fixing jewellery might be able to do very simple repairs, they won't be able to handle complex repair work. Because of this, the chances of them either failing to properly repair or inflicting further harm on, for example, an extremely valuable ring a customer has asked them to fix would be very high.

A blunder like this could cost a jeweller their reputation, result in them losing that person as a customer and leave them with a lot of debt (as they might either be asked to replace the jewellery or might even be sued by the customer). By outsourcing this service to an expert who has many years of experience with fixing jewellery and who won't, therefore, make this kind of mistake, the jeweller can protect their own reputation, their finances and their business.

2. The jewellery shop is very small

If a jeweller is quite good at repairing jewellery but operates their business in a very small property, then they should still outsource this aspect of their enterprise. The reason for this is as follows; in order to provide this type of repair service, a businessperson needs a relatively spacious worktop, on which they can keep the equipment they would need to use to do the jewellery repairs. This worktop needs to be reasonably far away from the main shop, due to the amount of noise which using the aforementioned equipment makes.

If a jeweller tries to squeeze these items into a tiny corner of their modest premises, two problems might arise. Firstly, they may not have enough space in which to work comfortably and quickly. This might make it hard for them to fix their customers' jewellery at a sufficiently fast rate. Secondly, if the worktop is too close to the main shop area, the noise made by the repairs might annoy the customers and discourage them from browsing and buying items.