The Rise of the Jewellery Influencer: When Did the Salesperson Become the Jeweller?

Something strange has happened to the jewellery industry.

The traditional jewellery salesperson hasn't disappeared.

They've become a TikTok influencer.

For most of my career, I've had a fairly simple philosophy:

Why go to a salesman when you can come directly to the workshop and work with a craftsman, designer or artisan?

I've spent more than 30 years making jewellery. I trained at the bench, worked in Hatton Garden, worked for some of the world's leading jewellers and eventually built my own workshop.

My interest has always been the object.

How it's designed.

How it's constructed.

How the stone is set.

How the metal behaves.

Whether the proportions work.

Whether it will still be wearable in twenty years.

And ultimately, whether we've created something that feels more like a small piece of art than another piece of jewellery from a catalogue.

But increasingly, I think we're entering a very different jewellery industry.

One where the person selling you the ring might know considerably more about content creation than jewellery making.

The New Jewellery Salesperson Is an Influencer

TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have completely changed how people discover jewellers.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I'm writing this article for the internet. I make videos. I post my work online. Social media allows a small independent workshop to reach people around the world without needing a huge advertising budget or an expensive Bond Street showroom.

There are some brilliant jewellers, designers, gemmologists and craftspeople using social media.

But there's another side to it.

It's now incredibly easy to look like a jewellery expert online.

You need a phone.

Some diamonds.

A supplier.

A nice backdrop.

A little confidence.

And preferably the ability to talk quickly into a camera.

Suddenly you're a jeweller.

Or at least you look like one.

Being Good at TikTok Doesn't Make You a Jeweller

This is where I think consumers need to be careful.

We're seeing an abundance of people entering the jewellery trade with relatively little practical experience.

They may be fantastic salespeople.

They may understand social media better than I ever will.

They may produce brilliant videos.

They may be charismatic, entertaining and incredibly good at building an audience.

But none of those things necessarily tells you whether they understand jewellery construction.

And jewellery is technical.

Very technical.

We're working with precious metals, diamonds and gemstones that can cost thousands or tens of thousands of pounds.

A beautiful idea on a screen still has to become a physical object.

That object has to work.

Jewellery Isn't Just About Making Something Look Pretty

A ring has a job to do.

It has to hold an expensive gemstone securely while somebody wears it on their hand every day.

Think about what your hands go through.

Doors.

Tables.

Bags.

Clothes.

Work.

Travel.

The occasional accidental knock against something that makes your heart stop for half a second.

An engagement ring isn't an Instagram render.

It's engineering on a very small scale.

The thickness of a claw matters.

The depth of a setting matters.

The amount of metal supporting a diamond matters.

The relationship between the head and the shank matters.

Stone hardness matters.

Metal choice matters.

How something is assembled matters.

How it will eventually need to be repaired matters.

These are things you learn through experience.

Often by getting them wrong.

You Don't Have to Be a Goldsmith to Make Good Jewellery

I want to make an important distinction here.

You absolutely do not have to be a handmade goldsmith like me to create good jewellery.

There are excellent jewellery designers who don't physically manufacture every piece themselves.

There are fantastic businesses using CAD, casting and specialist manufacturers.

There are knowledgeable jewellers who work with brilliant setters, mounters, polishers and workshops.

That's completely legitimate.

The jewellery trade has always involved specialists.

The problem isn't that somebody doesn't personally sit at a bench with a file and a torch.

The problem is when somebody doesn't understand how jewellery is fabricated and produced but presents themselves as an authority on it.

Those are very different things.

A Jewellery Designer Needs to Understand How Jewellery Is Made

You can draw anything.

You can render anything.

Increasingly, AI can create an image of almost anything.

But can it actually be made?

More importantly:

Can it be made well?

That's the question.

A designer needs to understand what happens after the drawing leaves their desk.

How thin can that section realistically be?

Will those claws protect the stone?

Can that setting be cleaned properly?

Can it be polished?

Can it be resized?

Can a setter physically get their tools where they need to go?

Is that gemstone suitable for the way it's being set?

What happens after ten years of wear?

Is there enough metal to maintain the structure?

A client shouldn't have to know the answers to those questions.

The person designing and selling the jewellery should.

The Danger of Promising Clients the Impossible

This is where a lack of technical knowledge can become a genuine problem.

A client arrives with an idea.

They want the finest possible band.

Almost invisible claws.

A huge diamond.

No visible metal.

The stone floating in mid-air.

And they want to wear it every day for the rest of their life.

A salesperson wants to say:

“Yes.”

A craftsman sometimes has to say:

“No.”

Or, more accurately:

“We can achieve the feeling you're looking for, but we need to change this part so the ring actually works.”

That's the difference experience makes.

I'm not trying to ruin your idea.

I'm trying to make sure your diamond is still in the ring ten years from now.

Good Jewellery Design Is Problem Solving

For me, jewellery design isn't simply drawing something unusual.

It's solving a series of problems.

How do I create something visually interesting while keeping it wearable?

How do I make a setting appear delicate while retaining enough strength?

How do I expose as much of the diamond as possible without compromising security?

How do I create negative space without weakening the structure?

How do I make something unconventional that can still be maintained and repaired in the future?

That's where design and craftsmanship meet.

The restrictions are part of the design.

And if you don't understand those restrictions, it's very easy to design jewellery that works beautifully on Instagram and terribly on a finger.

Are You Following the Jeweller or the Jewellery?

This is another shift I find fascinating.

Increasingly, clients don't just follow jewellery.

They follow the jeweller's life.

What they're wearing.

Where they're eating.

Where they're travelling.

What car they're driving.

Their opinions.

Their personality.

Their morning coffee.

The jewellery becomes part of a lifestyle feed.

Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

People have always bought from people they like.

But I think consumers need to be conscious of what they're actually responding to.

Do you love their jewellery, or do you love their content?

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

Social Media Rewards Personality More Than Craftsmanship

This creates a difficult situation for traditional craftspeople.

Making jewellery takes time.

Making genuinely unusual jewellery takes even more time.

But social media wants constant content.

Post.

Post again.

Make a Reel.

Tell a story.

Show your face.

Make another Reel.

Reply to comments.

Film yourself working.

Post tomorrow.

Repeat.

The algorithm doesn't particularly care whether you've spent thirty years mastering diamond setting.

It cares whether somebody watches the first three seconds of your video.

A novice with exceptional social-media skills can therefore appear far more authoritative than somebody who has spent their entire working life making jewellery.

That's a strange inversion.

The Problem for Real Jewellers

I don't mean “real jeweller” as somebody who necessarily makes everything by hand.

I mean somebody with real jewellery knowledge.

Goldsmiths.

Diamond mounters.

Setters.

Designers.

Gemologists.

Experienced manufacturers.

People who understand what happens between an idea and a finished piece of jewellery.

For these people, the internet has become increasingly noisy.

We're competing for attention with people who might have been in the industry for two years, two months or two weeks but who understand the algorithm incredibly well.

And from the client's perspective, everyone can look equally qualified.

That's the problem.

Jeweller or Jewellery Role-Playing?

The internet makes it incredibly easy to construct authority.

Nice office.

Diamond tweezers.

Loupe.

A few parcels of stones.

Good lighting.

Some confident statements about engagement rings.

Congratulations.

You look like a jeweller.

But what happens when something goes wrong?

What happens when the setting fails?

What happens when the ring can't be resized?

What happens when a client wants something genuinely unusual rather than another variation of the same solitaire?

Who actually designed it?

Who understands how it was constructed?

Who made it?

Who set it?

And who is going to repair it?

These are questions I think clients should ask more often.

Why Does So Much Modern Jewellery Look the Same?

I think this is partly why we're seeing so much jewellery that looks remarkably similar.

The same oval diamond.

The same thin pavé band.

The same hidden halo.

The same four claws.

The same CAD proportions.

The same Pinterest references.

The same ring appearing again and again with a different logo underneath it.

When jewellery businesses become primarily marketing companies rather than design-led workshops, originality becomes risky.

Why design something genuinely new when you already know what sells?

Look at what's trending.

Make your version.

Create a video.

Repeat.

It's an efficient business model.

It's just not particularly interesting to me.

Craftsmanship Creates a Different Kind of Jewellery

I approach jewellery from the opposite direction.

I'm interested in making things that I haven't seen before.

Sometimes that starts with architecture.

Sometimes sculpture.

Sometimes a particular diamond.

Sometimes it's simply a shape I've been thinking about.

Then I have to work out how to turn that idea into jewellery.

That process is difficult to scale.

And that's partly the point.

I'm not particularly interested in making thousands of identical rings.

I'm interested in making objects.

Small pieces of wearable art.

The craftsmanship isn't something we add at the end to justify the price.

It's part of the design itself.

Handmade Doesn't Automatically Mean Better Either

I should probably upset my own side of the argument as well.

Just because something is handmade doesn't automatically make it good.

There are bad handmade jewellers.

There are brilliant CAD designers.

There are incredible cast pieces.

There are terrible hand-fabricated pieces.

There are experienced craftspeople with very little imagination and young designers producing genuinely exciting work.

I'm not arguing that traditional equals good and modern equals bad.

That would be ridiculous.

What I'm arguing for is knowledge.

If you're selling expensive jewellery, you should understand jewellery.

How Can You Tell If a Jeweller Is Experienced?

This has become surprisingly difficult.

Follower count doesn't tell you.

A blue tick doesn't tell you.

A beautiful Instagram feed certainly doesn't tell you.

So ask questions.

Ask who designs the jewellery.

Ask where it's made.

Ask who makes it.

Ask whether they have an in-house workshop or use external manufacturers.

Neither answer is necessarily wrong — you simply deserve to know.

Ask how long they've worked in the trade.

Ask why they've recommended a particular setting.

Ask what the potential weaknesses of the design are.

A knowledgeable jeweller should be able to explain these things without hiding behind marketing language.

And perhaps most importantly:

Look at the work.

Look at the Jewellery, Not the Follower Count

This is probably my biggest piece of advice.

If you're choosing somebody to make an engagement ring or bespoke piece of jewellery, spend some time looking at what they actually create.

Does everything look the same?

Are they designing anything you couldn't find elsewhere?

Can you see finished pieces as well as CAD renders?

Can you see evidence of making?

Can they explain their decisions?

Does the jewellery have an identity?

Does it look like their work?

Or could you remove the logo and have no idea who made it?

For me, that's important.

A designer should have a voice.

Social Media Isn't the Enemy

The irony is that without social media, you probably wouldn't be reading this.

And I certainly wouldn't be able to show my work to as many people as I can today.

So this isn't an anti-TikTok rant.

Social media has done some incredible things for independent jewellers.

It's allowed small workshops to compete with enormous brands.

It's given craftspeople direct access to clients.

It's made jewellery education more accessible.

It's exposed people to independent design that they might never have discovered walking down a traditional high street.

That's brilliant.

But social media has also blurred the line between expertise and confidence.

Someone sounding authoritative and someone actually knowing what they're talking about aren't necessarily the same thing.

Why Come Directly to the Workshop?

This brings me back to the philosophy I've had throughout my career:

Why go to a salesman when you can come directly to the workshop and work with a craftsman, designer or artisan?

When you commission a bespoke engagement ring from me, the conversation isn't travelling through layers of sales staff before eventually reaching the person responsible for making it.

We're discussing the object.

The diamond.

The proportions.

The setting.

The metal.

The engineering.

The compromises.

The things we can do.

And sometimes the things I think we shouldn't do.

That's what I believe bespoke jewellery should be.

A collaboration between the person who will wear it and the person who understands how to create it.

The Jewellery Influencer Isn't Going Away

And nor should they.

Some will become excellent jewellers.

Some already are.

Some will employ incredibly talented craftspeople and build excellent jewellery businesses.

Others will probably move onto whatever industry performs best on TikTok next year.

Time tends to reveal the difference.

But as consumers, I think we need to become slightly more critical about what “jeweller” actually means.

Being able to sell jewellery isn't the same as being able to design it.

Being able to design jewellery isn't necessarily the same as being able to make it.

And being able to make jewellery doesn't automatically make somebody a great designer.

The best people understand where their own knowledge ends and surround themselves with craftspeople who understand the rest.

Buy the Work, Not the Lifestyle

I don't expect my clients to care what I had for breakfast.

I'd rather they care about the ring.

Look at the design.

Look at the craftsmanship.

Look at the details.

Ask how it was made.

Ask why it was made that way.

Ask whether the person selling it actually understands the answers.

Social media has made it possible for almost anybody to look like an expert.

But jewellery has a useful characteristic that eventually exposes all of us:

It has to exist in the real world.

It has to be made.

It has to be worn.

It has to survive.

And long after the Reel has disappeared from your feed, the jewellery still has to be good.

At Karl Karter, I design and make contemporary fine jewellery and bespoke engagement rings from my London workshop, drawing on more than 30 years of experience within the jewellery trade.

My approach remains the same as it has always been:

Come past the salesperson and into the workshop.

Work with the people who understand how jewellery is actually made.

Because when you're spending thousands of pounds on something you may wear for the rest of your life, I'd rather the person advising you understands more than how to make a good video.

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Has TikTok changed what it means to be a jeweller? Goldsmith Karl Karter explores jewellery influencers, craftsmanship, experience and what clients should look for when choosing a bespoke jeweller.

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