Bench & Equipment Checklist

A jewelry repair business lives and dies at the bench. Before you write a single financial projection, list the kit you actually need, because the equipment line is the largest swing in your startup budget and it decides which repairs you can take in-house versus farm out. The plan should split this into a launch kit you cannot open without and an upgrade list you add once cash flow allows.

Launch kit (day one)

• Jeweler's bench with bench pin and catch tray: $250-$1,200 (£200-£950). The catch tray pays for itself the first time you recover gold filings.
• Soldering station, torch or laser welder: a propane/oxygen torch setup runs $300-$900, while a tabletop laser welder runs $6,000-$25,000. A laser lets you repair near heat-sensitive stones and is the single biggest capability decision in the plan.
• Rolling mill, ring mandrels and sizing stock: $400-$1,500. Essential for the highest-volume job, ring sizing.
• Polishing motor with dust collector: $350-$1,400. The dust collector is also a precious-metal recovery system.
• Ultrasonic cleaner and steamer: $300-$1,500. Every piece leaves the bench cleaned, which is a visible quality signal.
• Bench microscope or high-power loupe: $150-$3,000. A microscope is what separates a hobbyist from a shop that can retip prongs cleanly.
• Hand tools, pliers, files, burs and a digital scale: $500-$2,000.
• Safe and jewelers-block insurance: $800-$5,000 for a TL-rated safe; insurance on customer goods is non-negotiable.

Upgrade list (months 6-18)

• Laser engraver for inside-band inscriptions, a high-margin add-on at $30-$80 a line.
• Electroplating / rhodium tank to offer white-gold re-plating at $40-$120 per piece.
• CAD seat and a casting service account so you can quote custom work that repair customers ask for.

Tie every line above to your insurance schedule. Insurers price jewelers-block cover on the replacement value of customer goods held overnight, so a plan that names the safe rating and a stock cap reads as fundable rather than hopeful.

The torch-versus-laser decision deserves its own paragraph in the plan because it shapes both your capability and your capital ask. A torch is cheap, proven and sufficient for sizing, chain repair and most soldering, but it puts heat into the whole piece, which makes work near opals, emeralds, pearls and other heat-sensitive or treated stones risky. A laser welder concentrates energy in a pinpoint, lets you repair next to set stones without unsetting them, and opens up retipping and restoration jobs a torch-only shop must turn away or outsource. If your local market includes a lot of antique and estate work, the laser pays for itself in jobs you can now accept; if you are a lean studio focused on volume sizing, a torch start with a laser on the 18-month upgrade list keeps the launch budget honest.

What It Costs to Open the Doors

Starting a jewelry repair business runs roughly $15K to $95K (£12K to £75K). The gap is almost entirely the soldering decision: a home-studio bench with a torch can launch at the low end, while a fitted high-street storefront with a laser welder, a TL-rated safe and a lease deposit sits at the top. Unlike most retail, your inventory line is small because you work on the customer's own metal, so capital concentrates in tools and premises rather than stock.

Cost Breakdown

• Bench, microscope, laser welder or torch station: $6K-$45K (£5K-£36K)
• Hand tools, polishing motor, ultrasonic & steamer: $3K-$12K (£2K-£9K)
• Lease deposit, counter and secure safe: $3K-$22K (£2K-£18K)
• Findings, solder, stones and sizing stock: $2K-$10K (£2K-£8K)
• POS, insurance, licensing and working capital: $1K-$6K (£1K-£4K)

Funding routes worth naming in the plan

In the US, the volume of capital a repair shop needs sits squarely in SBA microloan territory (loans up to $50,000 through SBA-approved intermediaries), with the larger SBA 7(a) program available up to $5M for a multi-bench retail-plus-repair operation. SBA-backed lenders expect a written plan with collateral, a repayment schedule and realistic monthly Year 1 forecasts, exactly the document this template builds.

In the UK, the government-backed Start Up Loan offers £500-£25,000 per founder at a fixed 6% representative APR plus 12 months of mentoring, and a partnership can stack individual loans. Equipment finance is a strong fit for a laser welder because the machine itself is the collateral. Whichever route you choose, lenders read the same three things first: realistic revenue, clear unit economics and a credible repayment plan.

Where Bench Jewelers Buy

Your supplier relationships are an operations-plan section lenders actually read, because they show you can source findings, solder and replacement stones at trade prices rather than retail. Name your accounts in the plan. These are the suppliers the trade actually uses:

• Stuller, the dominant US findings, mountings and bench-supply house; also publishes David Geller's Blue Book, the standard repair pricing reference.
• Rio Grande, tools, metals, gemstones and a strong education library for newer benches.
• Otto Frei, specialist bench tools, torches and watch-repair gear.
• Gesswein, finishing, polishing and laser consumables.
• Cooksongold, the leading UK trade supplier of bullion, findings and solder, with same-day dispatch.
• HS Walsh, long-standing UK tool and equipment supplier for jewelers and watchmakers.
• Reshyne, white-label intake and tracking software if you plan a mail-in repair channel.

For the named pricing reference, build your menu around the David Geller pricing methodology (Stuller) rather than guessing. Geller's core insight is that you price the bench hour, not the gram of solder, which is exactly where most new shops leak margin.

Licensing & Hallmarking Rules

Jewelry repair sits at the intersection of consumer-protection and precious-metals law, so the permit stack is heavier than a generic service business. Map it by jurisdiction in the plan and budget for the police-reporting duties that often come attached.

United States

Most US repairers need a precious-metals dealer license the moment they buy, sell or take in scrap gold and silver. These are state or municipal, often issued through the police department, and several states (Ohio among them) require applicants to show good character and prior experience with precious metals. Expect fees of roughly $25-$300 plus a surety bond in many jurisdictions, and a 2-8 week turnaround. If you buy pre-owned pieces you will usually also need a secondhand-dealer license, which commonly carries a duty to file a daily report of purchased items to local police (CorpNet, 2025). On top of that sit the universal basics: a sales-tax permit and an EIN.

United Kingdom

UK repairers must comply with the Hallmarking Act 1973. Whenever you add metal to or substantially alter a precious-metal article you are altering a hallmarked item, and articles described as gold, silver, platinum or palladium above the weight exemptions must carry a hallmark from one of the four UK Assay Offices in London, Birmingham, Sheffield or Edinburgh. Weight exemptions are 1.0g for gold, 7.78g for silver and 0.5g for platinum. Selling or describing an un-hallmarked article above those weights in trade is an offence, and Trading Standards officers can seize non-compliant stock with fines of up to £5,000 per article (GOV.UK Hallmarking Guidance). You must also display the British Hallmarking Council dealer's notice where customers can see it, register a sponsor's mark if you add new metal, and register with HMRC under the high-value-dealer AML rules if you accept large cash payments.

Canada

Canadian repairers need a provincial business licence plus, in most cities, registration under a municipal secondhand- or pawn-dealer bylaw. Unlike the UK there is no mandatory assay office; fineness marking follows the voluntary Precious Metals Marking Act standard, so the plan should note that quality marking is a trust signal you choose to meet rather than a statutory hallmark.

Insurance and goods held in trust

The licensing section of a jewelry repair plan is incomplete without the insurance line, because you are holding other people's valuables. Jewelers-block insurance is the trade-standard policy covering customer goods on the premises, in transit and held overnight, and insurers price it against the replacement value of the stock you hold and the security of your safe. A lender wants to see a named carrier, a stated overnight stock cap that matches your safe rating, and a documented intake process that proves you can substantiate a claim. Add general liability, and if you employ a second bench, workers' compensation where required. Treat this as a compliance cost from day one rather than an afterthought; a single uninsured loss of a customer's ring can be existential for a one-bench shop.

One practical sequencing note: secure the dealer and secondhand licenses before you advertise that you buy gold or take trade-ins, and confirm your local police-reporting format up front. Several US municipalities require electronic daily reporting through a specific system, and retrofitting that into your point-of-sale after launch is more painful than building it into the operations plan now.

Repair Pricing & Profit Per Bench Hour

This is the section generic guides skip, and it is the one a lender turns to first. Repair labor carries a 60-80% gross margin because the only material cost is pennies of solder and a few findings; the value is your skill and time. The discipline is to price every job to an effective bench rate of $100-$125 per hour rather than to the metal you add.

Per-repair price grid (US retail)

Prong work scales fast: a ring with four to six prongs retipped at $30-$60 each (gold) can total $120-$360 on a single piece, which is why prong inspection at intake is a habit worth building. Ring sizing is the volume driver, and the trade data is reassuring on pricing power: Stuller, citing The Edge Retail Academy, reports that eight out of ten customers do not object to a repair price once the scope is explained, and that average repair tickets have crept up about $1 a year without denting volume.

Worked example, single-bench shop

Assume one qualified bench jeweler running 30 productive bench hours a week (the rest goes to intake, quoting and admin) at an effective $110 per hour. That is roughly $165,000 a year in repair labor. Add a modest custom and retail attach, and the repair bench typically anchors a business pulling around 60% of its foot traffic. After rent, consumables, insurance, software and a $30,000 owner draw, a disciplined first-year shop lands a net margin in the 5-22% band, with the upper end reached once the owner stops taking every job personally and trains a second bench.

Repair is also strategic, not just a line item. It is the reason customers walk in, the cheapest way to earn trust before a higher-value custom or bridal sale, and the most recession-resilient revenue you have, because people repair what they already own when they stop buying new.

Building a second and third revenue line

A plan that rests on sizing and chain repair alone leaves money on the bench. The shops with the healthiest margins layer in services that use the same tools and the same customer relationship. Written appraisals at $50-$150 turn a five-minute intake conversation into billable work and create a documentation touchpoint that brings customers back at insurance-renewal time. Rhodium re-plating of white gold, at $40-$120 a piece, recurs roughly every 12-18 months on a worn ring, so a plated wedding band becomes an annuity rather than a one-off. Custom work referred from repair conversations, where a customer asks whether you can rebuild a worn setting or reset an heirloom stone, carries the highest ticket of all and converts at a far better rate than cold retail because trust is already established at the counter.

Cleaning and inspection memberships are an underused lever. A $99-a-year plan that bundles unlimited cleaning, an annual prong-and-setting inspection and a small discount on repairs costs you minutes of bench time per visit but locks in foot traffic and catches loose stones before they fall out, which is exactly the moment a customer decides whether you are the shop they trust. Model these lines separately in the financial projections so a lender can see that your revenue is diversified rather than dependent on a single high-volume job type.

Capacity, not demand, is the usual ceiling

The constraint on a single-bench shop is almost never demand; it is qualified bench hours. A founder who insists on doing every repair personally caps the business at roughly $165K-$185K in labor. The growth move written into a fundable plan is the second bench: hiring or training a junior jeweler to handle sizing, cleaning and clasp work frees the owner for the high-margin stone setting, custom and appraisal work, and lifts the net margin toward the top of the 5-22% band. Show that hiring trigger in the model, tied to a utilization threshold rather than a calendar date, and the plan reads like it was written by someone who has actually run a bench.

Market Size, Demand & Growth

The global jewelry repair market was valued at $381.54 billion in 2025 and is growing at a 5.5% CAGR, with a forecast of $590.17 billion by 2033 (Archive Market Research, 2025). That headline number spans the full value chain; the part you actually compete in is narrower and more useful to size in the plan.

For a single shop, the relevant slice is the US watch-and-jewelry maintenance and repair services market, reported at roughly $6.5 billion (Kentley Insights, 2025), with industry estimates putting standalone US jewelry repair at around $1.5 billion a year. Two structural tailwinds matter: a sustainability shift toward repairing cherished pieces rather than replacing them, and a thinning bench-jeweler workforce as veterans retire, which tightens local supply right as demand holds. In the UK, demand concentrates in London, Manchester and Birmingham, the latter home to the historic Jewellery Quarter and the Birmingham Assay Office. Your plan should name the local competitor count and the nearest assay office, not quote a global headline.

The retiring-jeweler dynamic deserves a line of its own in a fundable plan because it cuts both ways. On the demand side, fewer benches in a given town means longer wait times at incumbents and customers willing to travel for reliable turnaround, which is a gap a new shop can name and exploit. On the supply side, it means the skill itself is scarce, so the plan should be explicit about who holds the bench credential, whether that is a GIA Graduate Jeweler track, a bench-certification path, or a documented apprenticeship, and what the succession or hiring plan is if that person is also the owner. Lenders treat key-person risk in a one-jeweler shop as a real underwriting concern, and naming the training pipeline for a second bench answers it before they ask.

Who Walks In, and How They Find You

Repair customers are not one audience, and a plan that treats them as a single block will misprice both the marketing budget and the service menu. Segment them so the financial model and the messaging line up.

Core customer segments

• The sentimental owner: someone with an heirloom or wedding ring that has worn thin, a snapped chain, or a loose stone. Price is rarely the objection; trust and turnaround are. This segment converts on reviews, in-store visibility of the bench, and a clear scoped quote.
• The insurance and appraisal customer: needs a written valuation for cover or a claim. High-margin, repeatable at renewal, and a natural door into cleaning memberships.
• The trade and wholesale account: other retailers, estate buyers and pawnbrokers who outsource bench work. Lower per-job price but high volume and steady, and a smart way to fill bench hours between walk-ins.
• The online mail-in customer: reachable nationally through a tracked intake flow. Names like Quick Jewelry Repairs and MyJewelryRepair built whole businesses here, and white-label software such as Reshyne makes the channel viable for a single shop.

Marketing that actually moves repair volume

The cheapest acquisition channel in this business is the bench itself. Stuller, citing The Edge Retail Academy, notes that positioning the bench where customers can watch a jeweler work both attracts foot traffic and demonstrates competence, which is why visible-bench layouts have spread. Beyond the storefront, the marketing plan should weight spend toward a Google Business Profile with a steady review cadence (local repair searches are overwhelmingly map-pack driven), before-and-after photography that proves craftsmanship, and partnerships with local insurers and estate attorneys who refer appraisal work. Paid search has a place for high-intent terms such as "ring sizing near me," but for a single shop the highest return is almost always reviews plus referral discipline, not ad budget.

Quantify it in the plan. If a typical repair customer is worth, say, $140 on the first visit and returns roughly twice a year for cleaning, plating and follow-on repairs, then a customer lifetime value of several hundred dollars justifies a modest acquisition cost and makes the case for a loyalty or membership program rather than discounting. That kind of unit-economics framing is what separates a repair plan a lender funds from a hobbyist's wish list.

Five Mistakes That Sink Repair Shops

Across the plans we review, the same handful of errors recur in jewelry repair startups. Address each one explicitly and your plan reads as operator-grade.

• Pricing the solder, not the bench hour. Quoting a $12 sizing because the metal cost $1 ignores the 20 minutes of skilled labor. Price to $100-$125 an hour and your margin survives.
• Skipping the dealer and secondhand licenses. Taking in scrap gold without a precious-metals dealer permit, or buying pre-owned pieces without the secondhand-dealer registration and daily police reporting, invites seizure and fines.
• Ignoring UK hallmarking duties. Re-shanking or adding metal to a precious-metal article without registering a sponsor's mark and meeting the Hallmarking Act puts you a £5,000-per-article fine away from disaster.
• No jewelers-block insurance. One safe break-in or a lost customer ring without cover on goods-in-trust can end the business overnight.
• Treating repair as a sideline. Repair drives roughly 60% of foot traffic; the shops that win make it the front door, not the back room.

More Questions Buyers Ask

How profitable is a jewelry repair business?

Repair labor runs 60-80% gross margin and 5-22% net once overhead and an owner draw are covered. Because material cost is minimal, profitability is mostly a function of bench utilization and disciplined hourly pricing.

How much do jewelers charge to resize a ring?

US sizing typically runs $30-$100 for one to two sizes, taking 15-30 minutes of bench time. Complex jobs (platinum, sizing down with stone removal) sit at the top of that band.

What equipment do you need for jewelry repair?

A jeweler's bench, a torch or laser welder, a microscope or loupe, a polishing motor, an ultrasonic cleaner and steamer, hand tools, ring mandrels and sizing stock, plus a safe and insurance for customer goods.

Can I run a jewelry repair business from home?

Yes, a home or studio bench is the lowest-cost entry, but check local zoning, your insurer's requirements for goods held on premises, and whether your jurisdiction's dealer-licensing rules still apply to a home-based operation.

How long does it take to learn jewelry repair?

Basic sizing and chain repair can be learned in months; clean prong retipping and stone setting take a year or more of bench time. Many founders pair a GIA Graduate Jeweler or bench-certification track with apprenticeship before opening.

Sample Business Plan Preview

What's Inside the Template

The jewelry repair business plan template gives you a structured, lender-ready document you fill in section by section. It includes:

• Executive summary framed for a repair-led, foot-traffic-driven model
• Service menu and pricing grid built on bench-hour economics
• Market analysis with space for local competitor counts and nearest assay office
• Operations plan covering intake, quality control, turnaround and insurance
• Equipment and supplier schedule tied to your insurance cover
• Licensing checklist for dealer, secondhand and hallmarking duties
• 5-year financial projections with bench-utilization and break-even modeling
• Funding request aligned to SBA microloan or UK Start Up Loan criteria

Prefer to start from a broader library? Browse all free business plan templates, or if your concept also involves selling pieces, the adjacent jewelry business plan template covers the retail side. For done-for-you research, see our market research and content service.

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