How many weeks should you expect between order and delivery?
Cut-to-order work moves on the cutter's calendar. A jeweler on the Ganoksin forum quotes a 6 to 8 week turnaround as normal wholesale practice, and that range matches what we see on Jaipur rondelle orders that need matching and drilling before they ship.
Add time of your own for receiving and checking and photography. Stock we already hold in Cupertino ships far faster, so the long lead time applies to the reorder behind the sale rather than to the strand in your hand.
- Order to cutter: the bulk of the wait.
- Transit and customs: build in slack.
- Your own intake: a few days before a strand is sellable.
- Repeat matching: add time when a color has to be pulled from the same rough.
What does the safety-stock formula look like?
Work in strands per week. Take your average weekly sales over the last several weeks, multiply by the lead time in weeks, and you have lead-time demand. Safety stock is a fraction of that number, and your reorder point is the two added together.
Say you sell two strands of 4 mm tourmaline rondelles a week and your lead time runs eight weeks. Lead-time demand is 16 strands, and half of that is 8 strands of safety stock. Add them and you have the shelf count that triggers your next order.
- Lead-time demand = weekly sales x lead time weeks.
- Safety stock = half of lead-time demand for steady, repeatable colors.
- Safety stock = a full lead-time demand for one-off colors you cannot match again.
- Reorder point = lead-time demand + safety stock.
Why do tourmaline and Welo opal need different buffers?
Tourmaline supply is uneven by nature. IGS reported dealers struggling to find new, high-quality tourmaline, and the same article on rough supply explains why a material can flood the market one year and disappear the next. Multi color strands compound this, since you are matching pinks and greens and blues in a single line.
Ethiopian Welo opal comes from one province, Wollo, and it was found in 2008. What varies most is brightness of play-of-color, so your reorder should specify the flash level you sold along with the size. Read the tourmaline guide and the Welo opal guide before you write the order.
- Tourmaline: carry the wider buffer, since a matched multi run is hard to repeat.
- Welo opal: buffer on brightness grade, and keep photos of what you sold as a reference.
- Both stones sell as October birthstones in the trade, so two reorders can land in the same busy window.
- Either one: split the order across sizes rather than betting a whole cycle on a single size.
How do you count demand in strands instead of beads?
Bead counts confuse forecasting. Convert everything to strands first, because that is the unit we sell and the unit the cutter works in. Standard strands from our Jaipur cutters run 13 to 16 inches, and 13 inch strands are common for faceted rondelles.
A 15 to 16 inch strand of 6 mm rondelles holds about 65 to 70 beads, 8 mm about 48 to 52 and 4 mm about 95 to 100. A 7.5 inch bracelet takes about 25 beads at 6 mm. One strand covers a bracelet or a 16 inch choker, and a long necklace takes two.
- Bracelet line, 6 mm: figure roughly two bracelets per strand plus offcuts.
- 18 inch necklace, 6 mm: about 70 beads, so plan a full strand per piece.
- Sample and repair losses: keep a small allowance out of your sellable count.
- Knotted work: recount, since knots change the beads per inch.
Reorder points by size and shape
Small sizes turn faster than they look on paper. Multi tourmaline faceted rondelles run 2 to 4 mm with us, and Welo opal smooth rondelles run 3 to 5 mm, so a single strand carries a lot of beads and one bracelet order can pull a whole strand off the shelf.
Set separate reorder points for each size and color, never one blended point for the stone. The rondelle shape page shows how these are measured and drilled, which matters when you write the size range into an order. Focals such as drops and briolettes sell slower per week, so their lead-time demand is smaller even though the dollars are larger.
- Fast movers: rondelles in your two best-selling sizes.
- Slow, high-ticket pieces such as pear drops and slices: order to a plan.
- Dead SKUs: retire them rather than buffering them if they sold nothing in a full lead-time window.
- New sizes: hold one strand and watch it for a full cycle before setting a number.
How do you place a reorder without guessing?
Pick one day a month and review every SKU against its reorder point. Anything at or below the line goes on the order, and anything within a strand or two of the line goes on too, since a combined order is cheaper to ship than two small ones.
Send us the SKU and size range and quantity by WhatsApp at +1 408-702-7405 or email tandongems@outlook.com. We confirm what is in hand, tell you what has to be cut and send an invoice. Browse strands in the shop or by stone in the stone guides.
- Give the finished piece you are making, so we can match strand length to it.
- Say if you need repeat matching to a strand you already bought.
- Group SKUs onto one order to save on shipping and paperwork.
- Note your reorder point in the message, so we can flag it if the cut runs long.