The Wastage Gap: The Silent Margin Leak No Jeweller Talks About

Every jeweller quotes a wastage percentage to customers — usually 8–12% on gold, sometimes more on intricate studded pieces. What almost nobody tracks is the other wastage number: what your karigar actually loses while making the piece. That second number rarely gets written down anywhere, and the gap between the two is where a meaningful slice of your margin quietly disappears.

Two Numbers, One Word

"Wastage" means two completely different things in a jewellery business:

• Quoted wastage — the percentage you charge the customer, fixed by your pricing policy.
• Actual wastage — the real metal lost to filing, polishing, casting sprues and rejects during manufacturing.

Most billing software only records the first number, because that's what shows up on the invoice. The second number lives in a karigar's memory, a scrap of paper, or nowhere at all.

Why This Gap Stays Invisible

Karigar relationships in this industry run on trust, not paperwork — issue gold, get back a finished piece, weigh the return, move on. Nobody stops to ask whether actual wastage was 6% or 9% this time. If quoted wastage is 10% and actual is 6%, you've made an extra 4% margin without noticing. If actual is 13%, you've quietly lost 3% on every single piece — and you'd have no way of knowing, because there's no record to compare against.

What This Actually Costs You

Take a mid-size store issuing 2kg of gold a month to karigars. A 3% unnoticed gap on that volume is 60 grams a month — not stolen, just unmeasured. At current gold prices, that's a real, recurring number most owners have never calculated, simply because they've never had both figures sitting side by side.

Closing the Gap: Three Things to Track

• Record actual return weight against issued weight for every single job, not just the finished piece.
• Compare quoted vs. actual wastage per karigar, not just per piece — patterns show up over months, not single transactions.
• Flag the outliers automatically. A karigar whose actual wastage keeps running 3–4% above quote isn't necessarily dishonest — but it's a conversation worth having with numbers, not guesses.

None of this needs a new philosophy — it needs the same manufacturing job you're already issuing and receiving to be logged with both numbers, every time, compared automatically. Once jewellers see the gap on paper for the first time, closing it becomes the easiest margin improvement they'll ever make.