New York City jeweler Joseph Chiazzese could expect to sell a typical pair of gold earrings for about $100 just a few months ago. Now, he is having to pay nearly four times that much to restock his display case with the same wares.

“It’s getting tough out here,” Mr. Chiazzese said. “Nobody wants to raise prices” out of fear that the sticker shock would alienate customers. “But smaller jewelers aren’t going to survive” if they don’t do something to offset their rising costs.

With gold prices hovering near $1,000 an ounce, jewelers across the city are struggling to restock supplies depleted from the busy Christmas and Valentine’s Day season at costs that have climbed 19% from a year ago. Some jewelers are closing their doors, while others are scaling back the amount of the metal they sell or using even imitation gold.

As of yet, retailers have resisted hiking their prices, although that could soon change. “Most jewelers are going to have to raise their prices to retain profits,” the president of the Jewelry Industry Research Institute, Kenneth Gassman, said. “In a recessionary environment, that’s probably the worst thing you do.”

Consumer spending is already on the decline, with the Reuters/ University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment dropping to 70.5 in March, the lowest reading since February 1992. The index was at 85.6 in 2007. In addition, sales in the jewelry industry are expected to grow between just 1% and 2% in 2007, compared with as much as 6% in previous years, according to a managing director at the World Gold Council, John Calnon.

For some jewelers, the way around a price hike has been limiting the amount of gold they sell. In some cases, low-end retailers are stocking up on lower-quality, 10-karat-gold items, Mr. Gassman said. Others are turning to alternative styles that use gold sparingly or contain less expensive substitutes, such as palladium or silver.

Many pendants, for instance, are now dangling from rubber and leather cords, rather than gold chains. Signature-style items are being downsized to use anywhere from a half to a third as much gold, while other items are featuring more woven or basket-style designs that use less metal. Still others feature larger gemstones, or consist of silver cores coated in thin, exterior layers of gold.

“You’re seeing more designs that marry gold with other, nontraditional materials,” a spokeswoman at the retail trade group Jewelers of America, Peggy Jo Donahue, said. “From the jewelry industry’s point of view, these trends are a godsend, because they allow them to use less and less gold.”

A few cash-strapped jewelry retailers have even considered even swearing off in-store inventories altogether — choosing instead to display gold-plated replicas of their traditional styles. In such cases, the retailers are ordering the real jewelry from an off-site manufacturer only after the customer has committed to making a purchase.

Retailers “are in a catch-22,” the vice president of the Long Island City jewelry manufacturer Overnight, Matthew Roth, said. “The price of gold makes having an inventory cost-prohibitive. But if they don’t fill their shelves, they lose customers.” He added: “A replica with the same weight and heft as gold will give retailers a cushion to try new products.”

Substitute metals became a popular alternative to gold when the price of the yellow metal rose to a record high of $850 an ounce in 1980. For the first time, metals such as silver, platinum, palladium, and even titanium came into vogue. With gold prices reaching another record high, designers are increasingly integrating metal substitutes into their signature designs, while a few retailers and manufacturers are considering specializing in non-gold jewelry. “A lot of companies are getting away from gold and going into silver, palladium, or platinum — and they’re paying half the price,” Mr. Chiazzese said.

Still, gold is unlikely to lose its position as a jewelry mainstay. “Ever since the Egyptians and the Etruscans used it, it has held a universal quality, a significance of prosperity and wealth that I think it will endure for some time,” Ms. Donahue said.