The realm of possibility: Managing clients’ CAD expectations

by carly_midgley | November 30, 2018 9:36 am

By Hemdeep Patel

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In the last 10 years, the jewellery business has changed by leaps and bounds. The most obvious shift has been in the area of digital marketing and brand growth. The industry has come to a point where having a web page is as important as having an online presence on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.

These new areas of growth allow you to not only create new selling channels, but also engage with your client in a more meaningful way. The big jewellery brands have spent a significant amount of money on growing within social media environments, which has been a primary reason why many retailers have started to bring these social media-savvy branded product lines into their stores.

However, in order to continue building their customer bases, retailers must provide some intrinsic value to the customer other than being a brick-and-mortar store providing shelf space to the brands. There has to be a reason why a customer should come to you rather than shop online or go to another retailer. Throughout my nearly 10 years of writing, I have continued to speak of the need for retailers to provide a value proposition to their customers, whether it is in the products they sell or the services they provide.

There are a couple of big questions that need to be answered. How can retailers continue to build their brands while spending the big dollars on branded jewellery? Is it more important to be a retailer that just houses many brands, or one that provides a wide range of jewellery-related services, products, and branded lines? Though the answer might not be simple and clear-cut, one thing is certain: customers need to know the product or service they are receiving is unique to the business and that it has an inherent value for which they are willing to pay.

Providing custom design service has allowed many at the retail level to rapidly grow their business brands, build their stature as service-oriented companies, and increase their inherent value. Further, through the process of helping customers build their own custom-designed pieces, they have a unique opportunity to build stronger relationships, which can create new sales.

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In the last 15 years, the use of computer-assisted design (CAD) in the jewellery industry has become the most important tool for all large- and small-scale manufacturers aiming to bring new designs and lines of jewellery to market. In around the same time, there has been a growing niche business starting to introduce CAD directly to the retail trade. Many retailers found they were able to further grow their businesses and create strong brand value by bringing CAD to customers, providing them with an opportunity to fully customize and build a personalized piece of jewellery. This allowed retailers to create a new and profitable service business catering to those clients who were never able to find the perfect piece. Further, they were able to share the success stories of happy customers with custom-designed jewellery with the world through the many available social media platforms.

Whether you decide to work with an outside CAD provider or have hired a designer to work in-house, you must be aware of the growing pains you will need to navigate and understand before you are able to fully reap the rewards of CAD and custom design. Though the process may seem as simple as sketching out an idea on paper, translating the design onto computer software, and pressing print, the reality is more complicated. There are many pitfalls along the way one needs to be aware of, identify, and resolve as early as possible.

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Passing the message
The retailer’s most important task is to create a clear line of communication between the customer and CAD designer, conveying the client’s ideas to the designer in a clear and concise manner. Good communication must be supported by clear notes indicating all the major and minor details of the piece. A typical set of notes will have the piece’s size and dimensions, along with the metals to be used, types of stones and their sizes, setting styles, and any images or sketches that further illustrate the customer’s design.

Retailers must also indicate what the customer sees as the most important details or design elements of the piece. This may seem like a duplication of the previously described notes, but there may often be details a CAD designer could overlook that were, in fact, very important to the client.

As the retailer starts to understand the client’s needs, it is vital to begin pinpointing any possible problems with the design and construction of the piece, or even with wearability and durability. During this early stage of project development, any major design issues should be identified in order to either advise of changes or—at the very least—temper the customer’s expectations. It is also important the retailer, with the help of his or her CAD designer, tries to provide new or modified options that can address the design flaw and still achieve the client’s expectations.

It is crucial to bring up these issues early on because this will reduce the risk the project will be abandoned by the customer. In many instances, turning a blind eye to a design flaw might seem like a good strategy to quickly move the project along, but from personal experience, I have found having to rework a CAD design only prolongs the situation, risks missing deadlines, and can jeopardize your relationship with the client.

Some of the most common issues can be as obvious as an ill-advised setting for a fragile stone (e.g. bezel setting a soft stone such as an emerald or opal). Another issue we see fairly often involves sizing—for instance, when the inspiration of a ring is derived from a catalogue featuring a two-carat centre, but the client wants to scale down the piece for a 75-pt centre. It may be impossible to recreate any of the design elements at a scaled-down version.

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A realistic picture
Perhaps the biggest pitfall is retailers are distracted by the infinite possibilities of design without knowing the realistic limitations of CAD and 3D printing. By understanding these limiting factors, retailers can better appreciate what types of designs can be delivered, what kind of timeframe they should be looking at, and—most importantly—whether it is even possible to design, print, and finish the piece.

One of these limiting factors is the skill level of the CAD designer. With the ever-growing number of design styles now exploding in the jewellery industry, the CAD designer’s abilities can affect what retailers are able to bring to market. Further, these designers are just starting to broaden their skills to address the growing trend of jewellery pieces inspired by organic designs. Each piece can be considered a form of digital art, where the required skills and timeframes are unheard of compared to designing most jewellery pieces. These pieces require additional skills such as using organic modelling software tools, and can take days, if not weeks, to design, rather than the mere hours needed to create most non-organic pieces.

The next limitation is the sheer computing power of the system being used to run the CAD software. At its simplest, this software is a series of 1s and 0s. Each element designed is a unique group of 1s and 0s, and the more elements you have, the more groups there are. Thus, every time the designer needs to move, manipulate, or alter an element, the software needs to run a new set of computations with all the 1s and 0s.

Eventually, every computer system will hit its computational limits. This normally happens when designs have more than 500 different elements, ranging from claws and stones to CAD-related design tools like cutters. In this instance, computer will either slow right down, rendering the use of a keyboard and mouse useless, or shut down the software entirely.

A significant constraint lies in what designs can be 3D printed and eventually cast into precious metal. Though it is possible to design virtually anything with CAD software, natural limitations are tied to the capabilities of the 3D printer and the available casting techniques. Though some high-precision printers are capable of printing to a dimensional width of 0.05 mm (0.001 in.), features designed at this size will not survive the casting and polishing process, since the initial polish can quickly cause a deviation of 0.1 mm (0.003 in.).

In the case of hand-applied features like milgraining, which can be quite labour intensive, it can be tempting to take a shortcut by just designing the beads on CAD and printing them directly onto the model. However, when the milgrained model is cast and polished, there will be an obvious difference compared to a hand-milgrained edge. The hand-applied version will always leave behind a sharp and bright milgrained finish that cannot be duplicated by a 3D printer.

As with any new venture or service offering, there is always a learning curve involved in CAD, but with an open line of communication between your client and CAD designer, these challenges can be managed and overcome. It is also vital retailers begin to educate themselves on the strengths and weaknesses of CAD and 3D printing in order to better understand the potential growth and limitations of this emerging technology.

[5]Hemdeep Patel has been writing since 2008 on a variety of topics relating to the jewellery industry, from advanced gemmology, gemstone, and diamond trends to emerging jewellery CAD/CAM technologies. He is head of business strategy and marketing for Creative CADworks, a 3D CAD/CAM firm specializing in design, production, and 3D printer and resin sales. He is a third-generation member of the jewellery industry. Currently, Patel is vice-president of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) Alumni Association for the Ontario Chapter. He is a graduate gemmologist and holds a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy. He can be contacted via e-mail at hemdeep@creativecadworks.ca.

Source URL: https://www.jewellerybusiness.com/features/the-realm-of-possibility-managing-clients-cad-expectations/

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