5 Things to Know Before Buying beads manufacturer from china

Jewelry accessory is one of the top 10 best products to import from China, because of the advantages of high value, small volume, low shipping cost, and high profit. Wholesale Jewelry from China is one kind of trending.

For more beads manufacturer from chinainformation, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.

In today’s article, we will learn:

• Which kind of fashion jewelry you can wholesale from China?
• How to make custom jewelry?
• How to find China jewelry factory?
• Where to buy cheap jewelry from China?
• Certificate and test of jewelry accessories

 

1, Which kind of fashion jewelry you can wholesale from China?

The jewelry types you can find in this category include earrings, necklaces, rings, bracelets, headband, pendants, charms... and many more.

Below are the materials from which China jewelry manufacturers make their jewelry:

• Silver (S925)
• Stainless steel
• Zinc Alloy
• Copper
• Aluminum
• Titanium

With different decoration, like fabrics, leather, pearls, natural stones, seashell, wood, beads, zircon, Swarovski stone, crystals, glass, cat eyes, resin, rhinestones…

Such a wide range of materials, decorations, and accessories offer a variety of options for making jewelry. So, we can always buy different designs and pattern jewelry in the market.

Note: the gold jewelry is not allowed to import from China at present, (gold jewelry means jewelry with gold material, you can import gold plated jewelry without any problem)

 

2, How to make custom jewelry?

Most large and medium-sized Jewelry factories have their own designers. These designers will use current popular fashion style or international fashion brands style as a reference, add their own ideas and modifications, create new styles, and then recommend them to customers. If no confidentiality agreement is signed with their customers, they will also introduce the existing customer's finished order style to other importers.

This is the showroom of one jewelry factory in which we cooperate.

So you can choose their existing style, or add the modifications or logos which you want, make your own custom jewelry.

For small jewelry factories, they usually don’t hire a designer. They take orders from trading companies, then you need to provide samples and artwork to them if you cooperate with this kind of manufacturer.

This is one small jewelry and accessories factory in which Bling sourcing cooperate, they mainly produce zinc alloy accessories and jewelry.

For example, one of my Chilean brand customers, she comes to China twice a year, every time she goes to the Guangzhou wholesale market about three days, for knowing the trend fashion and buying a lot of samples there, such as jewelry, handbags, belts, materials, etc., we will also visit different factory to select some new styles, , and we will make modify and develop new styles, then send to our cooperated factory for making samples.

 

3, How to find a China jewelry factory?

Most China jewelry factories are located in the following areas:

1, Guangzhou city (Panyu area): Sterling silver Jewelry

2, Dongguan city: stainless steel, silver, zinc alloy jewelry

3, Shenzhen city: Silver jewelry

3, Yiwu city: zinc alloy jewelry

4, Qingdao city: Korean style jewelry

Tips: most jewelry factories and china jewelry manufacturers specialize in just one jewelry accessory category each. (one kind of material which I list above)

You can find jewelry factory in three-way:

3.1, Search from the Internet

Website: Such as Alibaba, Global Sources, Made in China,

related article: How To Find Good Suppliers In Alibaba?[Complete Guide]

3.2, Attend the exhibition/Fair

You can also find China jewelry suppliers through a large jewelry fair. such as the Hong Kong International Jewelry Show(ASIA’S Fashion Jewelry and Accessories Fair), HongKong Global Sources Fair, and Canton Fair.

Attending these fairs, you can not only find all kinds of jewelry suppliers but also know the latest design trends for each year

My article about Canton Fair: Participate In 2019 Canton Fair: The Complete Guide

3.3, Cooperate with professional China Sourcing agent

The professional China Sourcing/purchasing agent is familiar with the products what you need, and normally they focused on certain field. They have full experience of price negotiation, sample development, production follow-up, quality control, and goods shipping. They will handle the whole procurement work in China on your behalf, providing one-stop service.

Bling Sourcing can be a good partner that makes your import jewelry from China more safe and easy and saves you a lot of money and time. Click here to contact us.

4, Where to buy small quantities and cheap jewelry from China?

Now, you just want to purchase a small quantity of each model, for example, two dozen of each design. For this small quantity, most factories will not take this order, then you can visit the China jewelry wholesale market.

There are mainly three Jewelry wholesale markets in China.

4.1. Guangzhou Jewelry Wholesale Market

Guangzhou wholesale market is the biggest jewelry wholesale market in China. From there, you can find the most fashionable, the most popular, the most complete and the best quality jewelry accessories. Jewelry wholesalers from other cities of China usually visit Guangzhou to buy the new styles.

Here list some Guangzhou jewelry wholesale market:

South-China International Commodity city: all kinds of jewelry, from cheap to expensive style.

Guangzhou Beijing Building: middle and high-quality jewelry accessories.

Taikang Road Jewelry Market: deal in imitation jewelry, for low-middle quality jewelry, with cheap price.

Liwan Plaza: deal in natural stone and crystal jewelry and all kinds of jewelry accessories

Xijiao Building: Stainless steel jewelry, such as the popular Figaro chain can be found here.

Hualin jade street: all kinds of jade jewelry

4.2. Qingdao Jewelry wholesale Market

Qingdao is very close to Korea. Lots of Korean jewelry companies build factories there, and mainly sell Korean style jewelry and jewelry accessories, and the quality is normally high.

Two main markets: Sino-Korea International Commodities market and Jimo Small Commodities market.

4.3. Yiwu small commodity wholesale Market

Actually Yiwu wholesale market sells all kinds of small commodities like a pen, socks, Christmas gift...Jewelry accessories are one kind of product which also can found there.

Contact us to discuss your requirements of a type of agate used for making jewelry. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.

Yiwu’s jewelry products can be sold at a very cheap price, but the quality is also relatively poor. Most styles and designs are imitative.

Tips: From the wholesale market, You may find some in-stock jewelry which sells at very cheap price, these jewelry pieces may be leftover products, customized products that were abandoned by customers, etc. if the style and quality are matched with your requirement, then you can't miss it.

 

5. Certificate and test of jewelry accessories

Most jewelry accessories will direct contact with the human skin, there are countries and regions that have rules for jewelry importation. So, it is quite essential that importers do some compliance tests when importing jewelry accessories from China.

Before talking about the jewelry certificate and test, let’s have a look at the common problems/defective of Jewelry production:

• Broken Chain or Link
• Worn Metal – happen on jewelry made from stainless steel, silver, and alloy.
• Easily Causes Allergies – may include excessive amounts of nickel, lead, and cadmium.
• Inappropriate Electroplating – Common problems include cracking, dull and hazy deposits in the plating, blistering, and oxidation.
• Stone Falling– This problem is common with jewelry decorated with stone/pearl/glass...It might occur as a result of glue quality or careless handwork.
• Wrong Stone putting – because of a wrong instruction or misunderstanding before production.

The tests of Jewelry accessories are divided into two parts: physical and chemical testing.

The physical test includes colorfastness, tensile test, sharp point, edges, etc. While the chemical test mainly deals with the content and thickness of hazardous chemical substances, such as lead, cadmium, and nickel.

Above the test report of jewelry (necklace and earing) form one of our customers.

At the end of the article, I would like to say, Jewelry is really a magic accessory, I could go shopping with the customer at the Guangzhou wholesale market for the whole day and don’t feel tired…

Hope this article helps you a lot in import jewelry from China. If there is any question, you can tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you and I will reply as soon as possible.

We recently received this email asking whether gemstone beads (especially from China) are fake, and it’s a great opportunity to address not only her question, but related questions that we frequently get over the phone and in our Showroom.

Hello,

I have recently come across some articles that say gemstones exported from China are fakes or contaminated. As a large distributor, do you test the products or suppliers before you re sell the items? If so, what are your findings? In general, do you think there is much truth to the speculation about gemstones and semi precious stones exported from China being fake or contaminated? Thank you for your help. –Lauren

Russ’ reply:

This is a great question. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to describe how we deal with misinformation and misleading names in the bead industry. We’ve struggled with this for years ever since I learned from a rockhound that most black onyx started out as chalcedony treated with sugar water and then heated.

The simple answer is yes, there is a lot of misrepresentation and misleading information about beads from China and elsewhere.
No, it’s not just beads from China that are enhanced or misrepresented. It’s not that simple. Enhancing or misrepresenting gemstones is not limited to Chinese suppliers.

Most buyers do not realize that gem enhancement is ancient, easily 2500 years old. Black onyx enhancement is reported in the notebooks of Pliny the Elder.

Some examples of treated or commonly misrepresented stones:

Black onyx is treated with sugar and “carmelized” with heat.Red carnelian is treated with acid in which iron has been dissolved and then heated.

Most blue sapphires are heat-treated yellow sapphires, often by the miners.

Most hematite beads are a manmade sintered iron oxide product, leading to names like Hematine, Hemalyke and hemalike.All the “fruity quartz” names from a few years back are merely pretty glass.“Opalite” is not a laser treated quartz. It’s a pretty glass with an opalescent quality, similar to milky opal crystal and Czech glass beads.Magnesite is a neutral stone that takes dyes and treatments very well.

Most beads sold as “Chalk turquoise”, and too many beads on the market as “turquoise” or “stabilized turquoise” are really dyed magnesite.

Broken/cut magnesite nuggets showing natural and dyed versions. (Click image for close-up.)Most turquoise beads on the market are stabilized turquoise, hardened with resins. (This enhancement is usually revealed, but confusion exists between stabilized turquoise and dyed magnesite.)

Although we are not gemologists at Rings & Things, and we don’t have fancy lab facilities or an X Ray Def machine in-house, we do use tried-and-true simple tests when we’re unsure about a batch of beads. When we receive unusually bright beads, or lovely even-colored beads strung on cord the exact same color, we put them in a bin of water for a few hours (or even weeks) to test if they are colorfast. We break occasional beads to see what color and/or texture is inside. We send out samples from metal suppliers for destructive assay to verify silver content and lack of lead or cadmium content. There is no equivalent testing facility for most gemstones sold as beads. The GIA (Gemological Institute of America) does a great job testing precious stones but they are not much help for inexpensive stone beads.

We break occasional beads to see what color and/or texture is inside. (Click image for close-up.)

We ask a lot of questions from our suppliers. We research on the internet and ask others in the gem and bead industry. We track new stones names on the gem forums (particularly mindat.org.)

We make mistakes, but when we discover we’ve used the wrong description or name we quickly change to the correct one and admit our error.

Editor’s note: One example is Thunder Agate:

Thunder Agate beads, mined near Thunder Bay, Ontario, and cut in China.

Our first batch of Thunder Agate was sold to us as Lake Superior Agate (the official gemstone of the state of Minnesota), but a customer in Minnesota told us “…it would be very hard to get any large Lake Superiors and the colors are not those of our area”. So we looked closer, and questioned the vendor, who said the rough is from the Thunder Bay area of Ontario (which is close, but not quite the same as the official stone). So we immediately re-tagged our beads, and sent a corrected email.

Part of the problem with beads from China is language and culture. Chinese names are often descriptive rather than technically mineralogical. The characters for turquoise in Chinese mean “Green tree stone.” Anything that looks like “Green tree stone” might be called turquoise.

The characters for turquoise in Chinese mean “Green tree stone.”

Jade is very important in China but the word “Yu” for jade is used for many different stones that are used the way jade is used in China. Here is a quote that Barbara in Beadcollector.net wrote during her visit to Beijing Geological Museum:

‘Jade’ in China describes all polycrystalline and cryptocrystalline mineral aggregates and a few non-crystalline materials that are suitable for carving and making into jewellery. The characteristics are beauty, colour, moderate hardness, tough and fine texture, and as well as nephrite and jadeite includes opal, serpentine, quartz, turquoise, lapis lazuli, malachite, dushun yu, marble, natural glass, rhodocrosite, sodalite, and rhodonite.

You see the problem this causes? In the West, only jadeite and nephrite are really jade.

I agree that many stone beads coming from China are sold with inaccurate names or descriptions.

• Some misrepresentation is intentional because the fake will sell better if the buyer thinks is is a more expensive stone.
• Some is misunderstanding the level of mineralogical detail or accuracy we in the West want.
• Some is that the importer does not ask enough questions of the cutter or Chinese exporter and passes on inaccurate names.
• Some is mislabeling by the Chinese exporter because they do not understand the English words.
• Some is simply lack of knowledge about stones and not caring to find out what they are selling.

For example, a Chinese seller understands that dyed magnesite is not real turquoise and that “stabilized” means the stone is enhanced. This leads to a dealer with 2 piles of blue beads, one labeled “Stabilized Turquoise” and the other called “Natural Turquoise.” The stabilized pile was really blue dyed magnesite. The “natural” was real turquoise hardened with clear resin. Natural to us means that nothing has been done to enhance the stone. “Natural” to that dealer meant that it started out as real turquoise.

On Etsy and on Chinese sites I see blue dyed magnesite sold as dyed howlite. They tried to be accurate (and knew it wasn’t turquoise) but are using the wrong stone name.

Examples of Natural and Dyed Howlite. Shown: Untreated white howlite donut, surface-dyed howlite donut, and strand of dyed howlite beads represented by the seller as “natural turquoise.” (I paid $75 for this necklace in the 70’s. It’s part of Rings & Things’ collection of fake turquoise. We learn from mistakes. ~Russ)

A lot of stones can be dyed or enhanced with stronger colors. Lately we’ve seen many common stones with intense colors added to them. Stones this intense should almost always be labeled as “dyed” or “enhanced”.

Bright Dyed / Enhanced Candy Jade and Agate beads.

We try to accurately label enhanced and dyed stones. From our old printed catalog:

Some stones are simply dyed, which is not always colorfast. One way to avoid getting caught with stones that “run” when they are worn, is to look at the cord or plastic line the beads are strung on. If the cord is stained with blotches the same color as the beads, then beware. We avoid stones that look like they will “run”, so our altered beads are generally enhanced with various trade secrets such as the centuries-old methods for coloring black onyx and carnelian, or dyes that only come off when exposed to acetone or acid.

We label gemstone beads in our catalog and online store with the following symbols and terms:
+ enhanced,
* manmade, and
~ descriptive name.
There isn’t room on the tags for explanatory paragraphs, so on each stones Category page in our web store, we have more information about the stones. Scroll down below the Carnelian beads on this page for an example. To see all of this information in one place, you might also be interested in our Gemstone Beads Index (sorry, no longer in print – but almost all of the information from it, is in the headers and footers of our Gemstone Beads Categories in our online store, and we’re working on getting the remaining information live again); it has a great deal of information about each stone (where it is mined, and how to care for it, as well as common enhancements or other important information).

+ Enhancements can include:

Dye/stain/acid to change the stone’s color or make natural color more pronounced or uniform.
Heat treatment to produce an effect such as crackling or color change.
Irradiation (harmless to the wearer) to create a new color.
Plastic/resin/wax to harden the exterior, making it more durable.

~ Descriptive Name

The names for these beads are meant to describe what they look like, rather than identify what they are made of. These are generally accepted, common terms including “new jade” (a serpentine) and “African turquoise” (a jasper). They are genuine, natural gemstones that resemble more-expensive stones, and make excellent substitutes.

* Manmade

You’ll find that many online sellers, and nearly all of the “big box” stores don’t clearly label manmade gemstones. Goldstone, for example, has been made in Venice since the 17th century, but few end consumers are made aware this is a fancy glass rather than a gemstone grown by nature.

Stones carved from “block” should be called manmade, but many sellers call them “stabilized” or “reconstituted”, or don’t question them at all. Genuine malachite has become rare, very expensive, and nearly impossible to find as beads. Our manmade malachite is a nice imitation carved from block.

Large pile of manmade imitation turquoise block at a Chinese Materials seller visited by Russ Nobbs in 1996. (Click image for close-up.)

I’ve collected many pictures of fake and misrepresented turquoise on my Pinterest page to help educate buyers: http://www.pinterest.com/russnobbs/turquoise-imitations/

What can you do to avoid buying misnamed and misrepresented beads? Buy from dealers you trust and who can tell you about the material. Ask questions when you shop. Ask detailed questions. If you are uncomfortable with the answers or the prices, don’t buy. Do some of your own research by checking the information in our gemstone category pages, Gemstone Index, or other sites and lapidary books.

I hope this answered most of your questions. I appreciate your business and your questions.

—————————————-
Russ Nobbs, Founder & Director
http://www.rings-things.com – Spokane, WA – USA
Shop gemstone beads now:

Additional questions can be posted at our Facebook page, or using the “Add a response” link below.

Links updated 2016-01-08. ~Polly Nobbs-LaRue. Russ, we miss you.

Edited December 2021to update links.

 

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