Mixed experience with Provence: my honest review and lessons learnt
I’m a first time customer of lab jewellery purchased directly from China and wanted to share my experience and lessons that I’ve learnt so others can learn from my experience (and hopefully learn from my mistakes). Im trying to stay objective as some items made by Provence turned out well but majority of the items in my most recent order had issues.
I thought I had done my due diligence but I got a bit overzealous and ordered too many items in my excitement. The lure of getting better deals with more purchases was high and I also got my sister and Mum interested so we ended up purchasing multiple items in our orders thinking we were getting better prices.
So here are my lessons from collectively ordering 8+ items in our family in the last few months.
Try to purchase based on standard CADs and seeing finished pieces that have been done by Provence. Avoid making changes to these CADs as you don’t know how this will affect final products. My final pieces have inconsistent quality. The first tennis bracelet ordered looked great so that gave us confidence to order more thinking the factory will produce the same level of quality. That’s not the case at all. The first bracelet had really small prongs and setting was a bit higher to let in more light. We ordered 2 more bracelets in our family but these had prongs that looked bulky and we didn’t realise the setting height was reduced to get a lower gold weight so the quote was better but you’re not getting the same quality.
This brings me to checking CADs carefully. Granted we’re not jewellery experts so it’s difficult to visualise the cad into a 3d product. I made the mistake of trusting the rep could translate the reference pictures I provided into the right CAD design. Perhaps some reps are better at this than others. The Provence rep I used for most of my orders seemed confident during the design phase but now seeing the final products, I realised their jewellery design experience is limited. Lesson here: start small to test the company and rep experience first. Also don’t do custom designs unless you’re confident in your rep’s ability to translate what you want. I now have a custom ring that does not look like the reference photos and the rep admitted does not match the cad design either. The ring looks like cheaply made costume jewellery. I’m still attempting to cancel this ring after seeing the final photos due to the poor quality work.
Ask for videos from different angles, of clasps opening and closing, and photos in outdoor natural light. I got a few photos and a video of my earrings which looked fine but on delivery, the earring backing was defective. When I took it out of the box, the backing slipped right off (it was the push lever design backing). I didn’t think to ask for a video of the backing staying on as it’s a pretty basic expectation. For remaining items in our order, we now ask for all the photos and videos to assess properly. We found my sister’s bracelet clasp is loose on one side in the video. We raised this with the rep and can’t believe she said she couldn’t see a problem with the clasp even though it was in the video. This issue is still being resolved.
Trying working with different reps. Build trust slowly. Communication styles, responsiveness, ability to help do a first pass on the CAD is important. I should have seen the red flags when I kept getting updated cad designs with issues not resolved from previous comments. I think some reps have too many orders, perhaps overworked or just don’t have the experience. On one item, I kept flagging the stone looked too big and was out of proportion compared to the reference photos of another bracelet made by Provence but was assured the bigger stone would look good. Now the final product is made, my instinct was correct and the jewellery looks out of proportion.
I’ve not worked with other companies in China before so I don’t know if this experience is normal. I’m a bit hesitant now to go through this again. I’m thinking lowest risk is to stick with group buys (I’ve not done this before but at least it’s a tried and tested cad and the quality will be consistent). For any custom work, I’d suggest trying different reps to make sure the experience is there for basic jewellery design knowledge. After all, it’s a big investment and an expensive lesson when the finished product is not to standard or expectation.
Would love to hear if others had similar experiences or where I should have done things differently. Hope this helps others who are new to the journey.