So you really love piercings. You have some, you want more, you enjoy the industry, everything about it is awesome! And you want to get into the industry, but being a piercer doesn’t necessarily sound right to you. Perhaps, it’s the jewelry that inspires you. Glittering gems, cool chains, all the versatility that comes with these pieces, and the way they can adorn your body, and improve your self-confidence! Jewelry making is a fascinating craft, and there’s something deeply satisfying about sitting at your bench and working on a piece for hours and then getting to see someone else wear it, love it, and celebrate it! Jewelry making is awesome, and it’s understandable why so many folks are drawn to getting into that side of piercing. However, diving into this niche market without a thorough understanding of the essential health and safety requirements for body jewelry can pose significant challenges. If you thought fine jewelry like rings and necklaces seemed complicated, body jewelry is ten times harder. I’ve met many incredibly skilled fine jewelers who have balked at the requirements for body jewelry. After all body jewelry is often being inserted into a wound, sometimes even a fresh one. These pieces need to be as beautiful as fine jewelry but as functional and safe as a medical implant. Navigating the intricacies of this industry and the requirements to keep jewelry safe is crucial not only for business success but also for the well-being of your clients.
So what goes into making body jewelry safe anyway? I actually have a blog post here that goes over this in-depth. But to start, we need to work with materials that are safe to be in the human body. Most of us have experienced wearing a cheap necklace or ring that turned our fingers green or made our neck itch. Perhaps a piece of clothing with metal accents that irritated our skin, or of course earrings that made our ears sore and itchy. When metal is in contact with the human body for prolonged periods of time, it can cause all sorts of reactions and negative outcomes if it’s not a material that is biocompatible. This means not harmful to living tissue. Fortunately, there are organizations like the ASTM and the ISO whose entire job is to test and regulate materials to ensure that certain types of metal are strong enough to build a building with, certain plastics are safe to go in the microwave, and yes, certain metals are safe to go inside your body. When we consider materials for piercing jewelry, we treat them like medical implants because, especially for fresh piercings, they basically are. They are going inside a fresh wound that is going to need to heal around this material, so this must meet minimum safe standards to be in a wound. For healed piercings, things can be a little more relaxed, but still quite strict. Some folks are lucky and have very durable skin that can safely wear all sorts of lower-quality materials without issue. However, this is not everyone. Different people’s skin, different piercing locations, and different climates can combine to make even healed piercings reactive to lower-quality materials.
In fact, some piercings can even migrate and reject from wearing low-quality pieces. Even piercings that have been healed and healthy for years and years. So even jewelry for healed piercings needs to be made of body-safe and biocompatiable materials. But materials aren’t the only factor- surface finish, gem settings, counter skinks, there’s a lot of different elements that go into making body jewelry safe for wear. So many factors that the Association of Professional Piercers recently launched a body jewelry verification program that approves brands that meet all minimum standards of quality set forth by both medical and scientific research, and the needs of the piercing industry.
All of this means getting into making safe body jewelry is daunting. If you want to work with titanium and steel you’ll need top-of-the-line machines to do so, sometimes million-dollar lathes and the ability to program and run them. With gold, you’ll need a full bench workers setup, and many folks making gold move to cast in-house themselves quickly in order to produce consistent pieces. There are also laser welders to properly attach pins, polishing setups, and everything you need to consistently quality control all pieces. It’s a lot. It’s a massive undertaking that requires a large initial investment of time, money, and effort.
So what happens when individuals want to get into making body jewelry? When folks have genuine, innovative new ideas, passion, and motivation for this industry and decide to start creating jewelry? Well, it usually goes one of two ways. Some folks decide to take this journey and they do a lot of research. They might seek our formal training in lapidary, carving, benchmarking, or machining, and then translate these skills to the industry. They might self-teach, utilizing accessible resources for these skills, local groups that allow them to rent materials and supplies, local tradesman programs, or travel and shadow and work with existing jewelers. They’ll spend months and even years refining their skill set, knowledge, and ability. They might get a business loan to cover the cost of equipment and supplies or get an apprenticeship program to work for a leading company already. They’ll spend almost as much time as a piercing apprenticeship learning and honing their craft before bringing it to the market for people to purchase. They understand that the process of creating jewelry people will wear in their piercings is just as important as the process of creating the piercings themselves, and should be held to the same high standards of safety, education, and care.
The other option is also the one I see more and more often. Folks who have piercings decide they want to get into making jewelry. They think…how hard can it be? They do maybe a few Google searches about ‘hypoallergenic materials’ read the first few results, order some ‘surgical steel’ barbells, and start making charm and chain attachments. They decide to outsource production because making it in-house requires such a massive upfront investment, and they go with the cheapest manufacturing company, often overseas so they never even see the manufacturing facility or get to talk to the makers in person about what they produce. Some folks just start drop shipping, selling the same designs as dozens of other retailers through TikTok shop or Amazon or trendy-looking online stores. They utilize manufacturers who are stealing designs from original small businesses, sometimes ripping off the very companies they follow and were inspired by to start this business. Some folks do decide to take a more DIY route- creating seam rings themselves in a garage that have unpolished, sharp edges. They decide to work with silver clay because it’s easy to use, and no they haven’t heard of argyria, what’s that? They stock externally threaded barbells, because what do you mean external threads are bad? If it’s bad then why do they sell it? They list their jewelry online as just gold, and when people start responding that it’s turning their ear green and flaking off they clarify, that it’s actually gold plated, they just forgot to put that in the description! “Nickle-free surgical steel” is a common item listing, even though surgical steel has no real meaning or set alloy, and virtually every steel listed as ‘surgical steel’ still contains nickel. Point this out to these sellers and you’ll hear “How was I supposed to know that- I’m just a small business!”
I didn’t know that silver could tarnish and stain someone’s skin permanently, I’ve never even heard of argyria. I’m just one person, I’m just starting out.
I didn’t realize I should have put the material and size in the item description, I have that in some of them but not all. It’s my mistake but I’m just a small business, you’ve got to give me time to learn.
Someone’s piercing rejected because the piece I sold them for their nipple piercing was the wrong size, low-quality material, and got stuck in their piercing? Well, I didn’t know that could happen! How should I know that resin and glitter aren’t safe for nipple rings? I’m just a single mom trying to have fun with a business on the side.
It’s wood, wood is safe for plugs. Wait, some wood is toxic? That wood is toxic? It caused someone’s stretched lobe to have a severe reaction and they lost almost all their size in their ears? I’m so sorry but I didn’t know, it’s not like it’s easy to find information about this online. I’m just one guy trying my best to make jewelry.
These are all actual, genuine statements I’ve heard from business owners. Folks who opted to get into business selling jewelry for people to wear in their piercings who had not done any serious amount of research did not make any real effort to work with safe materials or understand industry standards. People who decided that making jewelry as a living or a ‘side hustle’ sounded good for them, and then proceeded to prioritize their desire to make jewelry over the safety of their customer’s bodies.
Say I decided I wanted to get out of piercing and into cooking. I decided to start a little food truck in my neighborhood, and a few months in I gave a lot of people salmonella because I didn’t understand how to properly handle raw meat in my truck. If my response to that was ‘I’m sorry, but I’m a small business. I was trying my best, I didn’t know some of those food handling requirements.” That wouldn’t be an acceptable answer, would it? It would have been my responsibility to be properly educated in safe food handling and cross contamination before I started selling food. There are rules and regulations and requirements for a reason, to prevent people from getting sick. Just because you are a small business or a one-person operation doesn’t mean you get to just shirk all those rules and requirements, and it especially doesn’t make it ok when you hurt someone.
So why do we accept this excuse when it comes to body jewelry? Why do we allow companies to hide behind being a small business to justify selling unsafe, low-quality, and poorly made pieces of jewelry? Why does someone’s supposed passion for this industry give them a free pass to hurt others? And truly, if they were as passionate about the industry as they often claim to be….wouldn’t they take that passion and channel it into doing proper research and gaining proper education before selling things that can hurt someone if put in their body? That same passion for the industry motivates people to seek out proper apprenticeships to pierce and tattoo, so I would assume the same would apply to making jewelry.
When we decide to get into business, we have a responsibility to our customers and our industry to practice ethically, prioritize their safety, and to educate ourselves on how to create the best and safest product. Profit is of course a part of having a business, but it should not come at the expense of our customer’s bodies. I won’t sit here and pretend that getting into making quality, safe piercing jewelry is an easy task- it’s not. But this industry and the people who trust us with their bodies deserve to have it done the right way. They deserve jewels that will not hurt or damage their piercings. And the industry deserves makers who are passionate about safety and ethics.
If you are considering getting into jewelry making or perhaps run a small business making jewelry already, please make sure you are doing your due diligence in being a safe, ethical brand. Ensure you are meeting minimum standards for the industry, predicting safe pieces, and communicating with educated piercers and front of house about the quality of your pieces. This is a very open industry with many, many accessible resources for those looking to get into making jewelry. Many amazing folks will happily get you started or point you in the right direction. But your client’s bodies should come before your ego as a maker and before your bottom line.