Costume Jewelry Industry in Europe and China

Business in the future
Costume jewelry is considered a discrete category of fashion accessory, and as such
it displays many of the characteristics of a self-contained industry. Costume jewelry
manufacturers are located throughout the world, with a particular concentration in
parts of China and India, where entire city-wide and region-wide economies are
dominated by the trade of these goods. There has been considerable controversy in
the United States and elsewhere about the lack of regulations in the manufacture of
such jewelry—these range from human rights issues surrounding the treatment of
labor, to the use of manufacturing processes in which small, but potentially harmful,
amounts of toxic metals are added during production. In the United States a scandal
broke when it was discovered during testing that cheap costume jewelry from China
contained unsafe levels of the metal cadmium. The wider issues surrounding imports,
exports, trade laws, and globalization, also apply to the costume jewelry trade.
As part of the supply chain, wholesalers in the United States and other major nations
purchase costume jewelry from manufacturers and typically import or export it to
wholesale distributors and suppliers who deal directly with retailers. Wholesale
costume jewelry merchants would traditionally seek out new suppliers at trade shows.
As the internet has become increasingly important in global trade, however, this
model has been modified, as many retailers can now select from a large number of
wholesalers through the World Wide Web. Some of these sites also market directly to
consumers who can purchase costume jewelry at greatly reduced prices. Some of
these sites include fashion jewelry as a separate category, while some use this term in
favor of costume jewelry. The trend of jewelry-making at home by hobbyists for
personal enjoyment or for sale on sites like Etsy has resulted in the common practice
of buying wholesale costume jewelry in bulk and using it for parts.