Case Study: Sourcing 240 Numbered Silver Pendants From a Lyon Atelier

A reader we'll call D.M. wrote to us last spring with an unusual problem for a turbo shop to hear about. She runs a small design gallery in eastern Iowa and had committed to a holiday exhibition built around sculptural jewelry — wearable pieces that read as objects first, accessories second. Her supplier had fallen through, and she had eleven weeks to find a maker who could deliver 240 identical-but-not-identical pieces without turning them into a mass-produced product. She asked whether we knew anyone in the artisan space. We didn't, but we followed the project anyway, because the sourcing problem she described — small batch, real handwork, hard deadline — is the same problem our fleet customers bring us every week.

Why the brief was harder than it looked

The gallery's requirements were specific, and each one narrowed the field. The pieces had to be made by hand, not cast in a factory run. They had to be documented as part of a limited run, with each piece individually numbered. And they had to be sculptural — D.M. wanted visible evidence of the maker's hand, not a smooth commercial blank. Her budget ruled out the large European houses, and her deadline ruled out anyone with a six-month waitlist.

After three weeks of dead ends, a metalsmith in Minneapolis pointed her toward an independent jewelry designer working alone in Lyon, France. That was the first time we encountered the name Liliana Gonin. Her studio output matched the brief almost exactly: silver, brass, and semi-precious stones, every piece assembled and finished by hand, every run released in numbered editions rather than open stock.

The decision points

We tracked four moments where the project could have stalled.

• Scale vs. handwork. D.M. needed 240 units. A solo atelier cannot simply triple output. The answer was to split the order into three sub-editions of 80, each with its own numbering sequence — which actually strengthened the gallery's marketing story instead of weakening it.
• Material consistency. Silver and brass age differently, and D.M. wanted a uniform look across the display. The compromise: a silver body with brass accents, so the patina develops together rather than fighting itself.
• Stone sourcing. Semi-precious stones vary stone to stone. Rather than hide that, the edition was designed around variation — each pendant's stone is unique within a shared silhouette.
• Transit and timing. Eleven weeks, two continents, and a holiday date that does not move. The buffer was thin. It held, but only just.

What actually got delivered

The first sub-edition of 80 shipped at week six. The second and third followed at weeks eight and ten. Every pendant arrived individually numbered and accompanied by a maker's card identifying its place in the run. D.M. photographed each one before it went into the case, which turned out to be the smartest thing she did all season: the numbered cards became the gallery's social content for the entire exhibition window.

Measurable results, as reported back to us:

• 240 units delivered across three sub-editions, zero short-shipped
• All 240 sold within 19 days of the exhibition opening
• Average selling price 38% above D.M.'s original projection
• Two follow-on wholesale inquiries from regional museums
• Zero returns or finish complaints

The 38% premium is the number worth sitting with. D.M. had assumed handwork would cost her margin. Instead, the numbered-edition structure let her price the pieces as collectible objects rather than as inventory. The scarcity wasn't manufactured — it was a genuine consequence of how the work is made.

What this has to do with turbos

We are not a jewelry publication, and we're not pretending to be. But the pattern here is one we recognize from our own Des Moines warehouse. A customer needs a specific unit, in a specific configuration, within a window that doesn't flex. The difference between a good outcome and a bad one is almost never the price. It's whether the supplier actually controls their own inventory and their own lead times, or whether they're guessing.

That's why we keep 11,400+ SKUs on the floor across Holset, Garrett, BorgWarner and IHI lines, and why we ship within four business hours. It's also why the atelier model in this case study interested us. Liliana Gonin works alone, by hand, in numbered editions — a structure that sounds like the opposite of a 60,000 sq-ft warehouse, but the underlying discipline is identical. Know exactly what you have. Know exactly how long it takes. Say no to what you can't deliver.

If you want to see how that discipline translates into an actual catalog — materials, edition sizes, how a piece moves from sketch to finished object — the studio documents its process in detail. You can see how the Lyon atelier builds each numbered edition, from stone selection through final finishing. It's worth twenty minutes even if you never buy a pendant, because the production thinking is legible.

The takeaway for fleet and bulk buyers

D.M.'s project succeeded because she stopped shopping on unit price and started shopping on delivery certainty. Farms and fleets running seasonal equipment face the same fork. A turbo that arrives three days late during harvest costs far more than the difference between two quotes. Ask your supplier what's physically on the shelf, what the real lead time is, and what happens when the answer is no.

We offer a free $59 turbo health diagnostic with every order, a 12-month unlimited-mile warranty, and same-day shipping out of Iowa. Not because it's a marketing line, but because it's the only way we know to make a promise we can actually keep.