Most independent jewelers believe they understand their costs. What they don’t see is the cost created in between. This paper is about the Frankenstein Tax—the hidden operational penalty paid by jewelers who assemble custom production from disconnected, “best-price” vendors. On paper, this model looks flexible andefficient. In practice, it quietly consumes time, margin, and attention.

Custom jewelry does not fail because of price. Every custom project begins inside a narrow emotional window. The jewelers who win at custom are not pushing clients faster.

Most jewelers think they are in the jewelry business. Increasingly, the most successful ones are in the systems business.

Most jewelers do not want to scale endlessly. They want to scale cleanly. That is what Jewelry-as-a-Service enables when it is implemented correctly.