Smart Shine Tips: 3 Jewelry Cleaning FAQs for Your Store Associates

Smart Shine Tips is a new monthly series from The Kingswood Company, the industry leader in jewelry cleaning and care. If you’ve ever wondered how you can sell more jewelry cleaner we’re here to help! Each month we’ll be bringing you pro tips that you won’t find anywhere else. You’ll be able to download the tips to share with your team and store associates.

Smart Shine Tips: 3 Jewelry Cleaning FAQs for Your Store Associates

Your customers look to you as an expert on all things jewelry related. When your customers have jewelry cleaning questions, do your store associates know what to say?

Here are three top FAQs your team should be able to answer

1. Can I use dish soap or other DIY or household cleaners to clean my jewelry?

No, that’s not a great idea. DIY cleaning hacks percolate throughout social media and the internet, but they aren’t specially formulated to clean jewelry. Therefore, they run the gamut from not very helpful to downright dangerous.

Your associates can offer jewelry care products from your own line, along with tips on which products work best on which type of jewelry. They can also encourage your customers to both clean and polish their pieces, with a liquid jewelry cleaning product and a polishing cloth.

For more information on DIY jewelry cleaners and why they are best avoided, visit our blog: https://www.thekingswoodcompany.com/a-closer-look-at-diy-jewelry-cleaners/

2.    What is tarnish?

Though tarnish makes your jewelry look dirty, it’s not actually dirt. Tarnish is the result a chemical reaction of metal (your customer’s jewelry) with a non-metal compound (usually oxygen or sulfur dioxide gases). The reaction causes a thin layer of corrosion to form on the metal, taking away the jewelry’s shine.

So, cleaning the piece with a fine or gentle jewelry cleaning formula won’t remove that black or gray corrosion. Tarnish needs to be removed with a product specially formulated to removed tarnish. Your associates can offer a professional silver cleaning formula from your product line, or a chemically-treated polishing cloth.

For more information on tarnish, visit our blog: https://www.thekingswoodcompany.com/tarnish-removal-what-your-customers-want-to-know/

3. What is the difference between cleaning and disinfecting?

What a crash course we all received in disinfecting thanks to Covid 19. Often people use the terms interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Cleaning refers to the process of removing dirt and germs from an item, rather than killing them. While disinfecting usually refers to killing germs on surfaces rather than humans. The EPA regulates disinfectants, and few cleaning products are registered as such.

If your customers are concerned about germs on their jewelry and they probably should be, you can reassure them that frequent cleaning of their pieces with a professional jewelry cleaning product, such as a Fine Jewelry Cleaner or Gentle Jewelry Cleaner, should do the trick. The surfactants used in these formulas attach to a germ’s membrane, breaking the outer coating and rendering it inactive. The remnants are rinsed away, along with dirt and oils. Additionally, most disinfecting products contain bleach or other harsh chemicals, which pose a threat to your customers’ jewelry.