The email you dread
On Saturday you sell a vintage sapphire and diamond cluster ring over the counter. It was a lovely sale. On Sunday evening, an order notification arrives from your website: someone in another part of the country has bought the same ring. It is the only one there was.
Now you are writing an apology, refunding the payment and hoping they are not too disappointed. Some are understanding. Some leave a review about a shop that sells things it does not have.
The same thing happens with pieces taken out on approval, reserved for a customer who is thinking about it, or sent to the workshop for sizing.
Why the website falls behind
The shop and the website usually run on separate systems. The till knows the ring was sold. The online shop, perhaps Shopify or WooCommerce, has its own stock count, set to one when the piece was listed. Nobody updates it until someone does the weekly website check.
Stock sync tools exist, but they are designed for retailers selling many units of a product with a matching code. A jeweller's one-off pieces often do not have a matching code in both systems, so the sync never worked.
And pieces are unavailable for reasons that are not sales: out on approval, reserved with a deposit, in for repair after a customer tried it on and damaged a claw. No system tracks those states online.
What out-of-date listings cost
| Problem | Result |
|---|---|
| Sold pieces still listed | Refunds and disappointed online customers |
| Reserved pieces still listed | Awkward conversations with the customer who paid a deposit |
| Manual website checks | Staff time spent hiding listings |
| No link between records | Online and shop descriptions drift apart |
| Reviews about unavailable items | Reputation damage for a shop that cares about service |
The deeper cost is caution. Some jewellers stop listing their best one-off pieces online at all, because the risk is too annoying, and lose online buyers entirely.
Photographs complicate the fix. A one-off piece needs its own photos, often taken by the owner on a light box after hours, and they are uploaded to the website separately from the stock record. When the listing is eventually removed, nobody links it back to the stock number, so the next similar ring gets listed with the old photos, and the description of a sold piece quietly lives on under a new price.
How we keep shop and website in step
- Each one-off piece has one master record, usually in your stock system, with a unique number that the website listing also carries.
- When the piece sells at the till, the website listing is marked sold or hidden within moments, through the online shop's API.
- When a piece sells online, it is marked sold in the shop system, and a message goes to the counter to take it out of the window.
- Staff can mark a piece reserved, on approval or in the workshop from the counter, and the website shows it as unavailable or reserved according to your preference.
- New pieces can be listed online from the shop record with photos and descriptions, so the details match.
- A daily check compares both systems and lists any mismatch for a person to resolve, which catches anything the sync missed.
If you already use a point of sale that integrates with your online shop, we check whether the one-off items can be set up to use that integration first.
What changes for the shop
Pieces sold in the shop disappear from the website within moments. Online orders show up at the counter straight away. Reserved pieces are clearly marked. The weekly website check becomes a quick glance at the mismatch list.
- No more selling the same unique piece twice
- Reserved and approval pieces handled properly online
- Online and shop descriptions matching
- Confidence to list your best pieces on the website
Is this happening to you?
- You have refunded an online order because the piece had already sold.
- Someone updates the website by hand after shop sales.
- Pieces on approval or reserved are still shown as available online.
- Shop and website use different codes for the same piece.
- You avoid listing some pieces online for fear of double sales.