Custom vs Ready-Made Jewelry

If you can point at a product and pay the number on it, buy ready-made. If you have to start a sentence with "like that, but," you are in custom, and the next step is a design and a price, not a deposit on a vibe. The expensive mistake is commissioning a chain we already sell, or refusing a listed ring because you assume custom will be nicer without saying what nicer means. Nicer is a millimeter, a karat, a length, or a drawing. If you cannot name which of those is missing, you are not ready to commission anything.

Franky Diamonds was founded in 2010. The family has been in the jewelry trade since 1990. The motto is "We ain't cuttin no corners." Custom is where that sentence gets tested, because there is no finished photo to hide behind. The process page is how custom jewelry works.

Question	Ready-made	Custom
What you are buying	A listed piece with a photo	A design that does not exist yet
Price	On the page, before you talk to anyone	An exact number after the design, before anything is made
Choices	The variants on the listing: often gold color and length	Width, karat, length, stones, or a shape we do not stock
Surprises	Low, if you read the title. Hollow means hollow	Low, if you wait for the price. High, if you say "just make it"
When it is the wrong tool	The catalog does not contain the thing	The catalog already contains the thing

Neither column says "better gold." A ready-made 10K Cuban and a custom 10K Cuban are the same metal if both are actually 10K and stamped. Custom is not a purity upgrade. It is a specification upgrade. If you want 14K and we only list 10K chains, that is a specification. If you want the flat 5 mm we already sell at $1,880, paying for a design meeting is a long way around the product page.

The catalog is 420 products. The breakdown that matters for this choice:

• 46 chains, all 10K gold, $290 to $4,960. Eight of them are Cubans, $495 to $4,870. Lengths and colors are variants. The price on those Cubans does not change with length.
• 86 rings, including lab-grown diamond rings recorded at E color and VS1 clarity. A 2.00 carat lab heart is $3,200. A 3.14 carat lab heart is $3,900. A 4.25 carat natural round is $6,000.
• 184 earrings, including studs from $325.
• 37 pendants and 31 necklaces, from small gold initials around $365 to lab diamond necklaces up to a 30 carat piece at $8,950.
• 36 bracelets, including lab diamond bracelets at $2,200, $6,000, and $9,000.

That is a lot of ground. Search it before you commission. The chain wall is chains. The ring wall is lab diamond engagement rings. A listed piece ships insured. A manufacturing defect has a 7-day window to be reported. Sales are final. "I wish it were 2 mm wider" after delivery is not a defect. That wish belongs in custom, before the order.

Custom earns its keep on gaps, not on feelings.

• A Cuban width we do not list. The wall stops at 8.5 mm, and that one is hollow. A solid 10 mm, or anything in 14K or 18K, is not a hidden variant. It is a custom Cuban.
• A length the variant list does not offer. The 1.5 mm Cuban is 18 and 20 inches. Wanting 24 inches of that exact chain is a request, not a dropdown.
• A pendant from a drawing, a photo, a name, or a letterform we do not stock. Initials exist as ready-made pieces, including a cursive A at $390. Your kid's handwriting is not that A. The path is custom pendants, and the money conversation is custom pendant cost.
• A name chain, a tennis line, or an engagement ring with a spec the case does not hold. We do not list a tennis chain by that name. A commission has to say millimeter, length, and lab-grown or natural. Rings go through custom engagement rings. Name chains go through custom name chains.

Bring the ready-made piece that is closest, if one exists. "Like the flat 5 mm, but 14K and 22 mm wide" is a usable sentence. "Something fire" is not. We can price the first one. We cannot price the second one until it becomes measurements.

Ready-made prices are public. Custom prices are specific. You see the custom number before any gold is drawn into wire or any stone is set. If the number is wrong for you, you say no, and nothing has been made. That is the whole protection. It only works if you wait for it.

Custom can cost more than the nearest listed piece, because the nearest listed piece spreads its design cost across every person who buys it, and because you may be asking for more gold. A 14K chain contains more gold per gram than the 10K chains on the wall. A wider solid chain contains more grams. Those are reasons the price moves. They are not a mystery fee.

Custom can also be the cheap way to get what you want, compared with buying the wrong listed piece and living with it. A $4,260 solid 5 mm Cuban is a bad "deal" if you needed a 3.7 mm chain at $1,355. The smaller one is sitting on the site. Custom is not how you discover it.

We will not quote a percentage markup here, because a percentage without the design is fiction. Get the design, get the number, then compare that number to the closest ready-made piece. If they are close and the listed piece fits, buy the listed piece.

We do not publish a day count. A listed chain and a one-off 14K Cuban are not the same amount of work, and a diamond line is not the same amount of work as a plain link. Anyone who gives you a single number of days for "custom jewelry" is averaging things that should not be averaged. Ask about the piece you want, after the design exists. Do not collect a generic promise and call it a schedule.

Quality checks are the same ideas either way. Karat stamp. Solid or hollow, written down. Width in millimeters. Length with the clasp closed. Stone origin, lab-grown or natural, if there are stones. On a ready-made piece those facts are in the title and the variant list. On a custom piece they have to be in the design you agreed to. If they are not written, you did not agree to a piece. You agreed to a mood.

The FTC still applies. Gold is 10K at 41.7 percent, 14K at 58.3 percent, 18K at 75 percent, and the stamp has to match. Lab-grown diamonds have to be called lab-grown. Custom is not a tunnel around those rules. The motto about corners is a shop standard. It is not a substitute for the stamp.

1. Search the 420 listings for the width, the shape, or the pendant you described.
2. If it is there, buy it. Use the variant list for color and length. Read hollow when the title says hollow.
3. If it is not there, write the difference in numbers: karat, millimeter, inches, stone origin, or "match this drawing."
4. Wait for a design and an exact price. Approve it, or do not. Nothing is made before that yes.
5. Keep the invoice. Insured shipping covers the send. The 7-day window is for a manufacturing defect, not for a change of heart about a width you approved.

One more split people blur: changing a listed variant is not custom. Picking white gold instead of yellow, or 22 inches instead of 20, on a chain that already offers both, is just the product page. Custom begins when the dropdown ends. If you write "make it thicker" in an order note, you have left the listing and you do not have a price yet. Stop and ask for the design number before anyone treats that note as an order.

Start at custom when you already know the catalog missed. Start at the catalog when you are not sure. The showroom at 7900 NW 27th Ave, Unit 506, Miami FL 33147 is the fastest way to tell those apart, because you can hold the ready-made piece and feel the gap. Phone 954-504-5640. Instagram is @frankydiamonds if you want to see finished work before you describe your own.