This year’s winter in China was extraordinary long and became the longest for the last 15 years. Chinese jewelry designers found themselves in a similar winter of their own being long left in obscurity and lawlessness and waiting for their own spring on which they pinned their hopes for improving the situation in the jewelry industry. Designers of jewelry pieces are sometimes called to be the soul of jewelry since they work to develop jewelry fashion and their jewelry pieces acquire deep sense and transfer the warmth of human relations which is kept for ages. However, it is impossible to say that jewelers in China live easy lives since their situation in the jewelry industry, despite its rapid growth, remains rather sad. These days they began to speak about their problems openly.
Designer = Handyman
Statistically, 80% of those employed in the Chinese jewelry industry are engaged in small and medium-size family businesses whose management as a rule has no good education (in some extreme cases such managers have no education at all). For example, the correspondent of the “Jewelry House” (525zb.com) from Shenzhen in the south of China, having talked to the well-known Chinese brand of SunFeel (http://www.sun-feel.com/), has found out their point of view that jewelry items are first of all goods to be sold. Once sold you may forget about them. Therefore they would better prefer to spend huge money for TV advertising than to spend for improved design. This attitude reflects the existing situation in the industry: there is no proper attention and respect for art aesthetics and cultural components which are translated by artworks of jewelry designers.
Accordingly, the attitude towards the work of Chinese designers is rather scornful. Frequently they are considered as handymen, who among other important matters (such as selling a diamond ring) may find time to draw, model or cut out a thing or two. As a rule, company management gives the greatest priority to sales, therefore profit-earning divisions of companies are valued much more than designers who do not bring in money but are only “sitting and increasing costs” as one owner of a small gold workshop said about his neighbors’ design stand at the recent Shanghai jewelry exhibition.
The urge of some enterprises to turn each employee into a money equivalent is so great that during a high season of sales they can even transfer designers from their creative jobs to sales. Thus, their design work becomes only an auxiliary kind of activity. Besides, it is often possible to see that there are no appropriate conditions for creative activity like silence and privacy so necessary for concentration.
The majority of small jewelry enterprises have budget meant for educating their design staff like purchasing professional publications, visiting various events offered to exchange experience and improve professional skills. Long ago, TTF which is a modern jewelry trade mark in China spotted this trend thwarting progress in jewelry design and placed its stake on strengthening the brand’s creative team. When TTF did not yet bring profit, its general director, Wu Fenghua, already sent the company’s team of designers abroad to widen their vision and make them apprehend the culture of each country they visited exchanging experience with foreign experts and then express it in their new ideas and jewelry designs. This progressive approach laid a solid base for promoting the brand abroad and TTF was the first Chinese company to have its exposition at the prestigious exhibition of BaselWorld 2010 turning into an influential jewelry enterprise in the People’s Republic of China and worldwide.
Low wages
There are two points of view regarding jewelry designers’ labor remuneration – the one of designers and the one of employers. On the one hand, designers complain about absence of due respect and recognition of their work on the part of society and even bad treatment. On the other hand, employers often argue that the current level of Chinese designers is not good enough and consequently they receive exactly what they deserve. As always the truth is somewhere in the middle and each of these points of view has the right to existence.
Historically, copyright protection started to develop in the People’s Republic of China quite recently, and earlier it was not given great attention due to which it was possible to copy everything and everywhere and even to duplicate successful ideas in China. Therefore, the attitude to creative labor there is not too reverent. It is difficult to keep one’s uniqueness in China and the society there does not comprehend what an important role is played by the designer in creating added value in jewelry pieces.
As experts believe, the real level of Chinese designers as a rule exceeds the requirements set forth by Chinese jewelry workshops, however businessmen are rarely attentive to opinions expressed by creative specialists and more often than not are dictating their terms leaving no space for creativeness. Many educational institutions have launched designer programs and courses since only Shanghai accounts for more than 300 jewelry enterprises which need high-quality personnel. However, very frequently teachers’ qualification does not correspond to the required level which nevertheless does prevent these institutions from enrolling students.
Let's see the figures. According to Taoqi, a personnel agency, a professional jewelry designer earns in China at least $2,450 a month while an expert educated abroad and having a work record of 5-8 years earns at least $6,000. Trying to find out the truth, your correspondent addressed designers engaged at different jewelry companies in China. As it turned out, it is more appropriate to consider these figures to be a likely dream of Chinese designers.
The average salary of a designer, who just started to work with a company here, is only 2000-3000 yuans ($290-440) a month. For comparison, approximately as much may be paid in Shanghai to a Chinese office-girl without any experience of work. Student Wang Jin, who is going to receive her diploma this year, hopes to find a job as jewelry designer with a salary of 5000 yuans ($740) a month and says she will be quite happy with it so far. The discussion of low designer salaries at a specialized forum ends with the following message: “It will be better to start own business and gradually develop it than to live such a life.” It is obvious that for the Chinese designer it is a perspective though bothersome alternative.
However, independent designers who are not restrained by employers’ requirements and are free to create fall under the immediate influence of fashion and the market. Fashionable designer Guo Xin told in her interview to Phoenix Jewelry Magazine released in March 2010 that she managed to create only a small part of jewelry pieces so to say from her heart. Chiefly, she has to be guided by what is sold best.
Actual absence of copyright protection
Producing new designs is a weak point of many jewelry companies. Every day jewelers are visited by people ready to sell latest designs. In the twinkling of an eye a new work of a designer comes into the public domain once again depriving him or her of their authorship right.
As a rule, it is required at least three months to work out and introduce a new product range of jewelry. To get a patent for your collection you will have to wait for one year or more. The existing system is not able to resolve this market conflict, indirectly conniving at wonton growth of Chinese replication.
Although the right to own products developed by designers completely belongs to the company, designers themselves do not possess copyright for the results of their labor. As is known, in Western countries there is a widespread contract pattern of cooperation between designers and jewelry companies when the author of a design gives his or her work to business and receives a certain commission from the sale of each product. However, for China it looks like virtual reality.
And still the situation of Chinese designers is not as hopeless as it may seem. Along with the development of the jewelry sector, necessity to compete with foreign brands and intention to operate on the international level, Chinese jewelry companies are facing the need to change their attitude to designers’ work and improve design. This process is also assisted by the activity of such international organizations as the World Gold Council and International Palladium Council in China, as well as by annual design contests in China and Hong Kong which enhance the importance of jewelry art, improve social awareness of value and labor input produced by creative work and facilitate career development of gifted designers.
Designers in China put high hopes on new managers belonging to the so-called “second generation” which is believed to consist of children from the families which made huge fortunes during the fast economic growth in China starting from the 1990s. As a rule, this generation is educated abroad adopting leading-edge thinking and cultural values in the West and they better understand art; therefore their attitude to designers and their products will be entirely different from the one prevailing today. The winter for Chinese designers turned out to be extraordinary long, but spring is not far off and they will not have to wait for a long time. Just five years.
Olga Patseva, Rough&Polished, Shanghai
