Glossary · Wholesale Sourcing
The vocabulary of
buying wholesale.
Wholesale jewelry sourcing has its own shorthand — keystone, MOQ, DAP, Incoterms, the 4Cs, GIA and IGI, Net-15. Each term below is defined in plain language for the retailer reading a quote, with a link to the guide that goes deeper where one exists.
Pricing & Terms
Keystone pricing
Keystone is the jewelry trade's shorthand for doubling the wholesale cost to set retail — a 50% margin, or a 2x markup. It is a baseline convention rather than a rule; many retailers price above keystone on differentiated pieces and below it on commodity stock. Knowing the keystone math lets a buyer read backward from a shelf price to the wholesale cost a supplier needs to hit.
Go deeper →Net-15
Net-15 is a payment term giving the buyer 15 days from the invoice date to pay in full, with no interest inside the window. Net-30 and Net-60 work the same way over longer periods. Trade terms like these let a retailer sell goods before the supplier's invoice comes due, easing the cash cycle — suppliers usually extend them only to established accounts with payment history.
At Clazoire: Clazoire can offer Net-15 terms to established accounts.
Go deeper →Factory-direct
Factory-direct means buying from the manufacturer that actually makes the goods, rather than through a distributor, importer, or trading house layered in between. Cutting the middle tiers removes their markup and shortens the line between a buyer's spec and the bench producing it, which is what makes low minimums and made-to-spec work economically.
At Clazoire: Clazoire ships factory-direct from its own Surat manufacturing, with a Toronto HQ and a New York sales office.
Go deeper →Ordering
MOQ
Minimum Order Quantity
MOQ is the smallest quantity a supplier will produce or sell of a given style — the floor on a single line item or on the whole order. A high MOQ ties up open-to-buy and risks dead stock; a low MOQ lets a retailer buy shallow, test demand, and reorder the winners, at the cost of a higher per-unit price. MOQ is the single biggest driver of a small retailer's cash cycle.
At Clazoire: Clazoire's minimum order quantity starts at 1 unit on most styles; a few specific styles carry a higher minimum.
Go deeper →Line sheet
A line sheet is the wholesale catalog a supplier sends to buyers: each style with its photo, SKU, specifications, MOQ, and wholesale price, laid out so a retailer can write a purchase order from it. It is the working document of a wholesale relationship — the buy-side equivalent of a menu, distinct from consumer-facing marketing.
At Clazoire: Clazoire publishes its catalog as downloadable wholesale line sheets.
Go deeper →Shipping & Trade
Incoterms
Incoterms are the standardized international-trade shipping terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce that define exactly where the seller's responsibility ends and the buyer's begins — who arranges carriage, who carries the risk at each leg, and who clears customs and pays import duties. Naming the Incoterm on a quote (DAP, DDP, EXW, FOB, and others) is what makes a landed-cost comparison apples-to-apples.
Go deeper →DAP
Delivered At Place
DAP is the Incoterm under which the seller delivers the goods to the named destination and carries the cost and risk of getting them there — but the buyer is the importer of record and pays any import duties and taxes at the border. Under DAP, the price you are quoted is not your landed cost: you add duty, brokerage, and local taxes on top.
At Clazoire: Clazoire's international shipments are DAP: the buyer is responsible for any import duties and taxes.
Go deeper →DDP
Delivered Duty Paid
DDP is the Incoterm that puts the maximum obligation on the seller: they deliver to the destination and pay the import duties, taxes, and customs clearance, so the buyer receives the goods with nothing further to settle at the border. DDP makes the quoted price the landed cost, which simplifies a retailer's math — but the seller prices that duty and risk in.
Go deeper →Quality & Certification
The 4Cs
The 4Cs are the four standardized attributes by which a diamond is graded: carat weight, cut, color, and clarity. The grading labs record each on a certificate so a stone can be valued and compared independently of any seller's description. Together the 4Cs are the common language buyer and customer use to talk about a stone's quality.
Go deeper →GIA
Gemological Institute of America
GIA is the independent gemological laboratory whose diamond grading reports are the most widely recognized benchmark in the trade, especially for natural diamonds. A GIA report grades the stone against the 4Cs, giving a retailer and their customer a neutral, verifiable record of quality that the seller did not write.
At Clazoire: Clazoire's natural diamonds are GIA-certified.
Go deeper →IGI
International Gemological Institute
IGI is an independent gemological laboratory that grades diamonds against the 4Cs and is the report buyers most commonly expect to see on lab-grown stones. Like a GIA report, an IGI certificate is a third-party record of the stone's grades, letting it be verified independently of the seller.
At Clazoire: Clazoire's lab-grown diamonds are IGI-certified.
Go deeper →Lab-grown vs natural diamonds
Natural diamonds are mined; lab-grown diamonds are created in a controlled environment with the same chemistry and crystal structure, so they test as diamond and are graded on the same 4Cs. Lab-grown diamonds are inherently conflict-free and typically carry a lower wholesale cost, which changes the margin and price-point math a retailer works with — the trade convention is to pair natural stones with GIA reports and lab-grown with IGI.
At Clazoire: Clazoire's lab-grown diamonds are inherently conflict-free because they are created in a lab.
Go deeper →Sourcing
Private label vs white label
White label means branding a supplier's existing, proven catalog design as your own — fast to launch, low risk, but shared with whoever else stocks it. Private label means having pieces made to your own specification — exclusive and on-brand, but with longer lead times and a real minimum. The choice is between speed on a known winner and control over a piece that is uniquely yours.
Go deeper →Now you speak the language