Guide to Buying Jade Jewelry Wholesale

Entice your customers with luscious, green jade jewelry

By Jeff Copeland

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Jade jewelry has long been prized in Asia not just for its lustrous, opaque beauty but its healing powers, according to traditional Chinese medicine. If you’re looking to offer jade jewelry for sale in your store, you can readily find jade jewelry distributors online or by visiting trade shows. But choosing high quality, solid jade jewelry takes some education in the ways of the jade jewelry market.

Some starting points before buying jade jewelry wholesale:

“Jade” jewelry may actually be either of two stones, jadeite or nephrite. Jadeite is the more valuable and ranges in color from a deep green to lavender and white. Nephrite tends to be greyer than jadeite and less evenly colored.
Jade gems come in three grades: “A” is for the all-natural stone that goes into the most costly solid jade jewelry. “B” jade has been treated with acids and resins to improve color and fill gaps. “C” has been treated and dyed. Beyond that, there’s an enormous amount of questionable jade jewelry for sale that may actually be dyed quartz or even plastic.
With so much uncertainty about jade quality, if you want to sell genuine jade necklaces, jade earrings and other high-end, solid jade jewelry, you’ll need to make extra efforts to find reputable dealers. One question to ask: Does the jade jewelry wholesale distributor offer authenticity certificates?

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Find Chinese jade jewelry wholesale vendors

China was the historic center of jade jewelry production and Chinese jade jewelry makers still dominate the trade.

I recommend: Finding Chinese jade jewelry wholesalers is easy: Try China B2B directory sites like Alibaba.com or Global Sources. Evaluating companies to partner with – that’s the difficulty. The U.S Commercial Service can help you check out the background of a Chinese jade supplier. Even better, meet and assess Chinese jade jewelry makers in person at a China jewelry market trade show, like one of those run by CMP Asia. For a sense of the variety of China jade jewelry makers, see Hong Kong jade specialist Sheentiff or Alamode Inc., a large-scale jewelry producer with offices in California and a factory in Dongguan.

Find North American jade jewelry distributors

If you prefer to work with jade jewelry importers or manufacturers close to home, you can find a variety of providers online or by hitting the gem trade shows.

I recommend: Jadeite.ca is the online outlet of an Ottawa jade wholesaler that claims to import mostly A-grade, certified jadeite jewelry. The Jade Mine makes green jade jewelry with stones from its own nephrite mine in British Columbia. Jade by Nikolai in Honolulu (no website – call 808-732-0609) designs and manufactures exquisite jade jewelry for sale in high-end stores. For more jade jewelry distributors and manufacturers, check these leading shows: GemFair, JA New York Shows, MJSA Expo New York and JCK Las Vegas.

Protect against inferior jade jewelry for sale

While finding reputable jade jewelry distributors is still the best protection, you can ask your jade jewelry partners to provide certificates of grading and authorization from well-known gem-testing labs or send jade gemstones to the labs yourself.

I recommend: Labs that test jade include the Hong Kong Jade Association, the Hong Kong Gems Laboratory, the American Gem Trade Association and the Gemological Institute of America.

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

You can do a quick and dirty field test to determine if jade gemstones are the most desired type, jadeite: Hold them up to your cheek to feel the coolness. Rub then in your hands and repeat. If the stones still feel cool, they are the real deal.

The official source of Buying Jade Jewelry Wholesale is the Jade Jewelry page at Business.com

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