We are looking to have a few jewelery pieces manufactured in lots of 100-300 at a time. I'm not sure where to look as we have zero manufacturing experience.
The items will be small silver pendants and earrings. I imagine the items would be stamped as a single piece and then need to be paint on some parts.
You are looking for a production jeweler also known as a manufacturing jewelry company.
Here are some Options:
1) Check out http://www.racecarjewelry.com. They do complete production services in gold, silver, etc and advertise frequently on the Ganoksin (Thai for Art of Gold) Digest. No affiliation. Just seen them on the list for years and remembered their name.
2) Go on any of the jewelry/gemology forums and ask for recommendations: http://www.ganoksin.com/index.htm ; http://www.gemologyonline.com ;
3) Do a google search for "production jeweler" or manufacturing jeweler and you can probably find one that is local to you.
4) Ask your local "custom" jeweler for a recommendation.
5) Most larger cities have a section where jewelers congregate. In San Diego it's the Jewelry Exchange building on 5th street.
6) Check the trade magazines: Lapidary Journal, Jewelry Arts, Metalsmith magazine.
Hope that helps and good luck.
Check out shapeways.com. You might be able to do it yourself for really cheap. They were printing in silver in November for a trial. I'm not sure if they will bring it back.
If you are looking for manufacture which is deal in wholesale lot as you need, then you must have to choose experienced manufacturer & other main points as below:
1- Quality focus manufacturer
2-Offer the most competitive prices : If they have own factory, then they can sell jewelry at factory direct prices
3-Look they existing collection of designs : Large collection is good
4- Customized jewelry : Are they capable of custom/OEM/ODM orders? Ask them.
They are few manufacturing company may offer all above task.
If your looking for a custom jewelry manufacturer to handle your productions American Gemstone Group (www.gemwares.com ) is by far the best out there. They are an American company with their own factory in Bangkok, Thailand. Most importantly, they have American customer service staff on location as well as an organized system to privately upload your products for manufacture, get automatic ballpark quotes, and place orders through a private catalog in their web system. Overall it's just a really impressive setup.
Feel free to take my feedback with a grain of salt as I am affiliated with them, however before I worked with them I was doing jewelry sourcing for clients in Bangkok, Thailand and Shenzhen, China so had the opportunity to see how other companies handle custom orders and I can honestly say that I'm proud to be working with American Gemstone as they really are head and shoulders above the rest.