The Loupe: Our Shared Tool of The Trade

Every business has its tools of the trade. One of the tools most associated with jewelers is the jeweler’s loupe. It allows jewelers to gaze at the inner beauty of a gemstone to grade clarity or to map inclusions. Loupes are also used during an inspection to assess a piece for weaknesses and damage.

At The Kingswood Company, we have our tools of the trade too. Not surprisingly, we use screen printing machines and sophisticated bottling machines that fill our jars with our trade-secret formulas. But, it might be a bit more surprising to learn that we often use a jeweler’s loupe too.

Once you approve your product artwork, an exposure vellum is created with your approved design. This is inspected with a loupe by our design team to identify any possible issues before sending your artwork to screen-making, and on to production.

Once the order is sent to production, with each order, our screen printers print a few initial jars or cloths for a pre-production quality control inspection. They look at the product carefully to ensure that the printing is up to our exacting standards, examining your logo to be sure that it has printed beautifully and matches the proof you approved. In addition to looking at them with the naked eye, our team uses a loupe for extra scrutiny. Sometimes there are issues that are not apparent at first glance but which affect the crispness of the printing, particularly over a large print run. If our screen printers have any concerns, they will meet with our design team, who will also utilize a loupe to help identify any issues and offer final approval that the execution is exact.

If any problems with the printing are identified, the loupe comes into use again. Our screen printers use it to examine the screen itself, looking for any trouble spots or signs of wear. Use of a loupe (and their skills!) allow them to make almost microscopic repairs to the screen prior to printing, again to ensure the highest quality and crispness. Just as jewelers use a loupe to see the qualities of a gemstone that affect its beauty, our team uses one to ensure our print quality is second to none.

We are very proud of our quality control systems and the hard work our production and design teams do to ensure that each product that leaves our facility meets our customers’ expectations. And we hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes glimpse at the work that goes into your private-label jewelry care products. It’s fun to note that jewelers and screen printers share a tool of the trade!