How long does custom jewelry take? A step-by-step timeline

Most of the time in a custom order is not spent making anything. It is spent waiting: for a ring size, for a stone decision, for a second round of changes, for somebody to approve a price. The steps that involve a bench are short and predictable; the gaps between them are where a short job becomes a long one.

This is the timeline as AurumFlow, a New York jewelry design studio for jewelers, runs it, step by step — with the parts you control marked as such, because those are the ones worth planning around.

What happens at each step, and how long does it take?

Two of those rows are yours, and they are the two that vary the most. A model reviewed the afternoon it arrives and approved the next morning loses almost no time. A model that sits for a week while a client thinks it over adds a week, and nothing anyone does at the bench can win it back.

When does the production clock start?

When you approve the piece’s price and pay for it. Not when the brief arrives, and not when the model is sent: production is 5 business days from that approval, and that is the date to quote a client from. Counting from the first conversation is how a promise slips without anybody having been slow.

The design has its own, earlier start. Modeling begins once you approve the design price and pay the $80 deposit; the rest of the design’s price is part of the piece’s price, so you pay it once, when you approve the piece.

Until you approve it, a price follows the gold, and an expired quote is priced again at that day’s gold before you pay. Once you approve, it is fixed — the gold does not move your invoice afterwards.

What slows a custom order down?

Almost never the bench. In practice, the delays come from a handful of things that are visible on the first day:

• No ring size, or a size in another system (UK and Australia use letters, Europe uses the inside circumference). Send a US size or the inside circumference in millimeters.
• The center stone is not decided. The seat is cut to the stone, so a model drawn for “about a carat” has to be redrawn when the stone turns out to be an elongated oval.
• More than one round of changes. One round comes with every design; each round after that is $60, and each one costs a day or two on the calendar as well.
• A price approved late. An expired quote is not a problem, but it is one more step before production can start.
• A brief that describes the piece instead of showing it. A photo of something close, with notes on what to change, is faster than three paragraphs.

Can it be done faster?

Yes, in two ways. The first is rush, for a piece you need sooner: +25% of the labor. Ask for it when you order, not after; a rush decided on the day the piece was due is a rush nobody can deliver.

The second is to skip the CAD step entirely. A design from our own catalog is already modeled and rendered in every stone shape and metal it is offered in, so there is no design to wait for and no design fee — you choose the build, approve the price, and the bench starts.

Pavé Solitaire — a solitaire with the shoulders set

A catalog design like this one is already drawn in every shape it is offered in, so ordering it starts at the bench rather than at the modeler.

How do you give a client a date you can keep?

1. 1.Collect the ring size and the stone before the brief goes out, not after the model comes back.
2. 2.Promise the model, not the ring, at the first meeting: “you will see it in 1–2 business days.”
3. 3.Book the review with the client when you send the brief, so the model does not wait for them.
4. 4.Quote the delivery date only once the piece’s price is approved: 5 business days, plus inspection, plus the carrier’s time.
5. 5.If the date is fixed — a proposal, a wedding — say so on the brief, and decide on rush then.

None of that is complicated. It is the difference between a timeline that is counted from the steps you control and one that is counted from a calendar date somebody said out loud.