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Sourcing / The unglamorous page
We do not make all of this ourselves.
This page exists because somebody will eventually ask, and it is better that they find a straight answer here than a vague one in an email. It is not on the front page. It is not hidden either.
Jugielewicz is one person at a bench in Aarhus and four jewellers - two in China, two in Italy - who are better at some things than one pair of hands can be.
The honest split looks like this. Anything that involves cutting, engraving, setting a stone one at a time, sizing, or making something to your specification happens here in Aarhus - that is nine pieces in the catalogue at the moment, and the number goes up every quarter. Anything that involves drawing a kilometre of chain, or setting sixteen hundred stones into a single choker, does not, because one pair of hands cannot do that at a price any normal person would pay.
So the iced work, the tennis lines and the cast pieces come from jewellers we buy from directly. Most of it is China: Guangzhou for the pavé and the iced Cuban, Shenzhen for filigree and detail work. Guangzhou in particular is where a very large share of the world's set silver is made, and where a lot of jewellery that says otherwise on the box is also made. The chain and the casting are Italian - Vicenza for chain, which has been the chain capital of Europe since the 1970s, and Arezzo for lost-wax casting and enamel.
Every product page says which. Look for the line under the price: Made by hand in Aarhus, or Partner jeweller, Guangzhou · checked in Aarhus. It is not buried in a dropdown.
Everything is opened, checked and packed in Aarhus, wherever it was made.
01 / Who makes what
The bench here - 9 pieces
Solitaires and half-bezels, all engraving, all hand-cut calligraphy and nameplates, sizing, repairs, and final quality control on every single order regardless of where it was made. If a piece says Made by hand in Aarhus, it was made here from sheet and wire.
Iced work and pavé - 40 pieces
The single biggest source. Iced Cuban, tennis lines, halos, anything with hundreds of stones in it. Guangzhou sets more silver than anywhere else on earth and does it to a consistency one person cannot match. We supply the moissanite specification and the setters do what they are extremely good at.
Filigree and detail - 19 pieces
Pierced and chased work, signets, the calligraphy discs, the hamsa, the ornate crucifixes. Small-batch and hand-finished.
Chain - 25 pieces
A family chain house in the Veneto running the same drawing and soldering machines as most of the industry. Box, rope, figaro, franco, curb. We buy it unplated by the metre, then cut it, clasp it, plate it and finish it here.
Casting and enamel - 16 pieces
Lost-wax casting and kiln-fired vitreous enamel. The skull bands, the enamelled hearts, the rosaries, the cast charms and the struck medals.
02 / Import, duty and VAT
Why nothing
arrives with a bill.
If you have ever ordered silver from abroad and then been asked for another few hundred kroner before the courier would hand it over, this section is for you.
The short version: we do the importing, so you never have to.
When goods enter the EU from outside it, somebody has to be the importer of record. That person pays the customs duty and the import VAT, and deals with the paperwork. On a normal drop-shipped order that person is you - which is why a parcel from outside the EU so often turns up with a demand for 25% VAT plus a courier handling fee of 160–250 kr. on top, for the privilege of them filling in a form.
We do not work that way. Stock arrives in Aarhus in bulk shipments, cleared through Danish customs with Jugielewicz ApS as the importer of record. We pay the duty and the import VAT at the border, in our own name, before any of it is for sale.
By the time you buy something, it is sitting in a drawer in a flat in Aarhus. Your purchase is an ordinary domestic Danish sale: 25% Danish VAT included in the price you see, one parcel, no border to cross if you are in the EU, and nothing for a courier to invoice you for.
The same 149 $ chain, two ways
shipped direct, you are the importer
we imported it, you buy it in Denmark
Illustrative figures for a Danish delivery. The handling fee varies by courier; the VAT does not.
03 / Depending on where you are
What this means for your order
Denmark
A domestic sale. 25% Danish VAT is in the price on the website. Nothing else is ever charged, by us or by anyone else.
Rest of the EU
An intra-EU sale from stock already inside the union. No customs, no duty, no handling fee, no second bill. Danish VAT is included until we cross the distance-selling threshold in your country, at which point your national rate applies instead - and the price you see at checkout is still the price you pay.
United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland
Outside the EU customs union, so a border does exist. We ship DDP - delivered duty paid - which means we pay the import charges at your border and the courier has nothing to collect. Danish VAT is deducted at checkout and the destination charges are added in its place, so the total moves a little, but it is all shown before you commit and nothing is charged afterwards.
Outside Europe
We do not ship there. Not as a policy about who we will sell to - as an admission that we cannot yet do it properly. Prepaying duty outside Europe means a customs broker in each destination, and one person in Aarhus cannot hold accounts with all of them. Rather than hand you a parcel that might arrive with a bill nobody warned you about, the country list on the request form stops at Europe. If that changes it will be listed there before it is promised here.
04 / The questions people actually ask
Fair enough, but…
“So it is drop-shipping with a Danish sticker on it?”
No, and the difference is not cosmetic. Drop-shipping means the factory posts the parcel straight to you, the seller never touches it, and you get the customs bill. We buy stock outright, in bulk, carry the cost of it sitting in a drawer for months, and open every single piece before it goes out. That is also why we can tell you there are four left of something rather than guessing.
“Is a partner-made piece worse than a bench-made one?”
Usually the opposite, for the things they make. A setter in Guangzhou who sets pavé forty hours a week will do it better and more evenly than one man at a bench in Aarhus, and pretending otherwise would be vanity. What the bench here is for is the work that cannot be batched: one-off engraving, calligraphy, sizing, and fixing things.
“Why not just say ‘handmade in Denmark’ like everyone else?”
Because it would not be true for most of the catalogue. Nine pieces are made here; the other hundred are not. The first customer to look closely at a chain stamp would work it out anyway, and a brand that lies about small things gets believed about nothing.
“Is the gold real?”
The plating is real 18k gold, and on the chains it is laid down at 2.5 microns, which is thick by high-street standards. The piece underneath is sterling silver 925, not gold, and we have never described it as anything else. Plating is a wearing surface: on something worn daily it will start to go at the clasp or the knuckle within a year or two. Replating is free for the first 24 months and at cost after that.
“Who do I complain to?”
Mateusz, at mateusz@jugielewicz.com. There is no support desk and no ticket number, because there is no one else here.