For example, endurance race car driver Nick Boulle of Dallas-based de Boulle Jewelry notes that there is a shared passion between people who love watches and cars. “It’s done a lot for client crossover,” Boulle says. “We’ve built great relationships over a shared passion. We’ve had groups of up to 25 people with us at the races.”

Stephenie Bjorkman of Sami Fine Jewelry in Fountain Hills, AZ, who competes in risky sports involving horses, says her passion for horses has become an integral part of her business by recognizing the potential of that horse-loving customer niche. “My staff gets excited if someone walks in the door with horse s— on their boots!” she says. “Horses are expensive, and horse people can afford jewelry!”

Hockey player Michael Kanoff of Michael’s Jewelers in Yardley, PA, decided to sponsor his team by buying jerseys, which turned out to be a great idea because he’s picked up many new customers who play in the league and sold an engagement ring to one of the league referees.

At the very least, these 10 jewelers have something to talk about, whether or not they consider themselves to be daredevils.

Nick Boulle, president of de Boulle Diamond and Jewelry in Dallas and Houston, TX, in his racing gear (left) and with sister Emma, father Denis and mother Karen.

Race-Car Driver
Nick Boulle, de Boulle, Dallas, TX

Endurance race car driver Nick Boulle has raced at famous tracks across the United States and Europe, from Daytona Beach to Le Mans. Highlights of his racing career include winning the ROLEX 24 Hours at Daytona in 2017 and finishing 7th at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

“I truly love to compete in all ways, and to me, motorsports brings together a lot of the things that I love,” Boulle says. “It requires physical fitness; you have to find solutions to complex problems with your teammates, engineers and mechanics; and it also involves creativity as you work to navigate and ‘see’ the perfect line and driving techniques to drive a car around a racetrack with constantly changing conditions at the absolute limit.

“Then you throw in the fact that you’re all alone in the car, under immense pressure, and the track is filled with people who want the exact same thing that you do in that exact moment, and it makes for a great show and an unbelievable test of one’s skillset.

“I find the feeling of being in the car fairly calming. Sometimes at the start of a race, I might get some nerves, but once the race begins, you are so focused that it all becomes really quiet. None of our daily worries are able to invade the space, and even after a driver change in the middle of a 24-hour race, you get out and immediately debrief with the engineers and the next driver on standby to figure out how we’re going to keep improving the car and our standings in the race at that moment.

“I think what’s made me stay so in love with the sport is that when you are at the racetrack, you are working with your teammates and the car in absolute sync towards a common goal. Life can be complicated, but with motorsports, when you are competing at the racetrack, everything is suddenly very simple. You want to win and succeed and move the car forward; life becomes binary.

“You’re so focused that it’s almost cathartic because it’s very calming being around a situation that’s so simple. You want to win.”

Ellie Thompson

Trail Rider
Ellie Thompson, Ellie Thompson & Co., Chicago

“Over the last 10 years, the challenge of riding technical trails and keeping my fitness optimized for long days on my bike has been a great source of inspiration and a way to reinvigorate my energy. I enjoy racing as well as joyriding, both as a solo rider and with friends! The sport is not without risk and peril: I have come back to it again and again despite three collarbone breaks, a broken leg and multiple surgeries.”

Racing and Heli-Snowboarding
Steve Quick, Steve Quick Jewelers, Chicago

Steve & Melissa Quick

Melissa Quick says while her husband, Steve, is no longer racing powerboats (the most dangerous of his hobbies), he is racing cars and heli-snowboarding. “He never makes it to the Arizona shows because he is back-country snowboarding from a helicopter in British Columbia or Alaska!”

Steve concedes he is an adrenaline enthusiast with a competitive streak, but doesn’t consider himself a daredevil, since he takes every safety precaution possible.

“I have friends who base jump and wingsuit; they are daredevils in my estimation. I want at least half a chance if something goes awry. Roll cages, oxygen, rescue teams above in helicopters, six-point harnesses are all part of my comfort zone.

Steve Quick’s high-powered catamaran, below, before it was badly damaged in a wreck, left. He has since moved on to car racing with strict safety protocols.

“I am rarely as focused and exhilarated as I am behind the wheel or on my snowboard. I have been racing boats most of my adult life. The fascination with speed on the water culminated with a 17-year career racing Powerboats Offshore. They were large high-powered catamaran hulls that are more aircraft than boat.

“A few years after my last boat race, Manos Phoundoulakis [of EXEC] suggested I join his Gem Besties automobile racing team. Melissa was always uncomfortable when I was at a boat race, rightly so as we saw many competitors die. Not so with the cars. Accidents can and do happen whenever you are going very fast in competition, but our safety protocols are very robust.

“Most people presuppose that I must love skydiving or motorcycles. Not so much. I do a lot of helicopter skiing. That would be the only thing I do that if a really bad day happened it could be the last one. Everything is relative, and to many people, I would fit the definition of daredevil. In my mind, I’m a reluctant one.”

Fireworks Expert
Chris Wattsson, Wattsson & Wattsson, Marquette, MI

Chris Wattsson works for the company that conducts Marquette’s official Fourth of July celebration complete with choreographed music and a laser light show at Marquette’s Ore Dock, an event that attracted more than 7,000 people this year.

“I’ve always loved fireworks ever since I was a kid,” Wattsson says. “Even at 6 years old, I was always playing with firecrackers. I’d take a coffee can and a soup can, drill a hole in the top, and when you light it, it shoots itself out of the water. I like the concussions and choreographing it to music.

Chris Wattsson of Wattsson & Wattsson helps set up and operate the o icial Fourth of July fireworks display in his hometown of Marquette, MI.

“I just love the explosions. People are parked all the way out watching it from the shoreline. It’s a four-day setup. We close for a while, too, because I’m gone for a week. I take a week off to work even harder: There are heavy racks to move around, 60 to 80 pounds, a couple hundred of them that you have to move.

“I have to board my dog, Echo, a Norwegian elkhound, across town. He hates my hobby!”

Pyrotechnics
J. Mason Cutchin, JMason Custom Jeweler, Chapel Hill, NC

“Pyrotechnics!!! Rockets, cannons and fireworks are all very satisfying after hours. As a goldsmith, I play with fire every day. The rules are the same. Planning and building for successful performance apply to jewelry and pyrotechnics. Great fun! I wonder how many jewelers want the term daredevil as part of their profile? Pyrotechnics is no place for a daredevil. Cycling and water-skiing days are over. Riding my old unicycle would be a daredevil stunt these days!”

J. Mason Cutchin

Skydiving and High-Altitude Hiking
Denise Oros, Linnea Jewelers, La Grange, IL

“My wonderful engineer husband, who is a licensed IFR pilot, loves flying planes, but me, well I love the adrenaline high of jumping out of them. The peacefulness of floating once that chute opens is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. You can see for miles, and you can hear every little thing when you’re coming down. Amazing!

“And I’m extremely fortunate that my best friend is an endangered-wildlife biologist. As soon as Vegas is over, she plans our hiking trip through the Zion Narrows, which were shut down because of the snow melt this year. Bryce Canyon, which is high altitude hiking, and we often carry oxygen with us. Escalante and the Grand Staircase are just endurance venues, and this year we hiked and became familiar with the flora and fauna of Capitol Reef. You can’t beat southern Utah for incredible views and amazing scenery!”

Motorcycle Racing
Tom Duma, Thom Duma Fine Jewelry, Warren, OH

“I used to race motorcycles professionally; in fact, I told my dad, who was in the jewelry business, ‘Don’t count on me coming into the business, because I’m going to make lots of money racing and retire by the time I’m 40.’ Well, the professional racing was true. The making lots of money and retiring at 40 didn’t happen! I got really injured (fell off at the Indy Mile at 120 mph) ending my dreams of a national championship. But I still race at an amateur level in the 60-plus class, and I just did a two-seater ride at Road America on a Suzuki 1000. Chris Ulrich was at the controls, and I was on the back. It is called a Two Up ride! We did 155 down the straightaway. I have video and pictures to prove that!”

All-Around Adventurer
Jennifer Hornik Johnson, Miller’s Jewelry, Bozeman, MT

“Oh, I’m a big risk-taker. Love the thrill! Call me an adrenaline junkie. Have been bungee jumping, sky diving, canyoning, rappelling, rock climbing. A couple years back, I ran off the side of a mountain in Jackson Hole, WY, (paragliding); it was awesome. I have also paraglided off the coast in Lima, Peru.

“One of my favorite trips was to Switzerland in college, where I went canyoning, mountain biking and bungee jumping in the Swiss Alps.

“Another uber-memorable trip was to Peru in my mid-20s. After spending some time living and volunteering in/near Cusco, I traveled the country with my dear friend, Allison. Our days were filled with once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We did stuff like whitewater rafting the Urubamba River and sand-surfing on the dunes of Huacachina! We also competed a multi-day Inca Trail Trek to Machu Picchu, of course. It was incredible.

Jennifer Hornik Johnson (left) with two friends at Machu Picchu in Peru.

“A final story I’ll share was a special skydiving trip taken with both of my siblings. My brother and I took our sister soaring as her college graduation gift. All three of us did tandem jumps for the first time that day in Southern California. Talk about family bonding! (We didn’t tell our parents about the risky (ad)venture until it was over and we were all three safely back on the ground, of course.)

“My next big adventure could be in Africa. I have been trying to schedule a trip to Tanzania to (hopefully) summit Mount Kilimanjaro and experience a safari.”

Reined Cowhorse Competitor
Stephenie Bjorkman, Sami Fine Jewelry, Fountain Hills, AZ

Stephenie Bjorkman holds five world titles in the sport of reined cowhorse.

“I compete and show horses all over the United States. I currently compete in the National Reined Cowhorse Association where I show in cutting, reining, and cow boxing. I also show in the American Quarter Horse Association, where I show in reining, cow boxing, ranch riding, and ranch rail.

Stephenie Bjorkman, owner of Sami Fine Jewelry in Fountain Hills, AZ, competes in the National Reined Cowhorse Association competition.

“In the reined cowhorse, lots of people get hurt. Horses fall on their riders at almost every show. Being around horses and cattle, you cannot control your environment. Both are animals and will kick, bite, buck, and do lots of unexpected things. Cowhorse is a dangerous sport where you show your horse in reining and then chase a cow. I have gotten bucked off, kicked in the head (concussions), bitten and dragged. I still love riding horses! My sport is very high speed and dangerous and gives you an adrenalin rush. I can’t get enough.

“I also raise miniature horses that I use for therapy, team-building events, etc. I have tons of horse clients (that I have met competing) along with our jewelry store clients who visit my miniature horse ranch (snugglefarms.com).”

Hockey Player
Michael Kanoff, Michael’s Jewelers, Yardley, PA

“I played hockey as a kid all through high school and loved it. I stopped playing once I graduated. Every year, friends would ask me to play men’s league ice hockey, but I had no interest. But one day, one of my buddies called and convinced me to start playing again after an 18-year break. I started playing in my mid-30s and quickly realized I was in awful shape. Hockey completely changed my life, as I started working out for the first time in my life and eating better just so I could keep up with kids 10 years younger than me.

Now in his late 40s, Michael Kanoff (center) of Michael’s Jewelers still plays competitive hockey.

“I have had my share of injuries. I broke my collarbone from playing and swore I was done playing at that point. But I missed it and went back to playing after a year. I’ve been playing men’s league ice hockey for 14 years now, and I feel like an 18-year-old kid when I play and a 70-year-old man for the next two days, but it’s worth all of the aches and pains. As I am getting older, a lot of the time I don’t feel like playing. But when it’s time to leave, I blast hip-hop, Metallica or Rage Against the Machine in the car ride over and I am good to go.

“I refuse to stop playing because that would make me old, and I think age is a state of mind. I have way more energy in my late 40s than I did in my 30s. I am now chasing kids around the ice who are 20 years younger than me; I can’t catch them, but I hold my own.”

The post 10 Jewelers Share Stories of Larger-Than-Life Adventures appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

In contrast to the wider U.S. economy, which has seen productivity dip in recent years, independent jewelers report they are getting more done with less. Across the production and sales pipelines, a combination of innovation, technology and — crucially — a shortage of skilled workers are driving productivity gains as fewer hands do more work. In this year’s Big Survey, we dig deep into the issue of productivity, as well as a range of other issues that touch the lives of jewelers, from their best-performing brands, to crime, to pay scales and the most “hard core jewelry thing” they’ve ever done. Dive in!

THE MINE

The sourcing of diamonds, the product at the heart of American jewelers’ operations, has seen dramatic innovation with the arrival of lab-grown diamonds, which are now being stocked by 63% of jewelers. The margins on LGD remain better than for natural diamonds even as their prices have fallen.

THE SHOP

The shop is the engine room of jewelers’ productivity gains with 36% of jewelers rating their bench area as “extremely productive” in recent years compared to the 22% who rated their overall store so highly.

THE SALES FLOOR

The sales floor apparently has little to fear from online sales. People still want to come in and see and touch merchandise up close. Indeed, online was the one area where the overwhelming share of jewelers said they were seeing disappointing returns on their efforts, given the regular upgrades and constant attentio that are required.

THE BOSS’S OFFICE

Many jewelry store owners are making more money than ever, with almost one in three taking home $150,000 or more a year. But they are also working harder. 64% said their main strategy to cope with staff shortages was to do more of the work themselves.

The post Big Survey 2023 appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

Better take a step back and reconsider, because retailers with successful events in their repertoire agree that narrowing the focus, rather than taking a scattershot approach, is one important secret to success.

STEP 1. Focus, focus, focus.

“We see retailers making the mistake of sending an 8-by-10-inch mailer with 10 different offers on it to 20,000 people,” says consultant Megan Crabtree. “If they actually dissected that data and made specific marketing toward what people are more likely to purchase, they would get a better return rate.”

Because events, Crabtree argues, no matter how socially oriented or casual, are ultimately about making money. If done right, they could represent 10% of total annual revenues.

The IW Marks team in Houston hosts frequent events and plans parties in a structured way beginning with the end in mind, says Raymond Golden, general manager. They decide what type of event they’re going to have and what the attendance goal is.

“Decide what you want and then take the steps to make that happen,” he says. “If you say we want to have an event and see what happens, then spoiler alert, nothing’s going to happen, or nothing good’s going to happen.”

STEP 2. Once you know what sort of soiree you’re
hosting,fine-tune the marketing message.

“One of the most successful marketing mailers we’ve seen in the industry is a wedding band mailer that’s personalized to the client, and it actually shows them a picture of what their wedding band would be (based on the engagement ring they purchased) rather than just a generic message,” Crabtree says. “That has a three times better return rate than the average mailer.

“Many retailers hope and pray that people are going to show up, and then a week or two before, they run a top hundred customer list and one main generic list that they send to everybody, and they think that that’s going to create a successful event.”

Instead, make the invitations clean and focused with one incentive rather than multiple. Delve into the data on your customer list to see where your customers are coming from and which zip codes you may have an opportunity to grow.

STEP 3. The preparation prior to the event
is almost more important than the event.

Crabtree recommends that sales staff, monitored by managers, prepare at least three months in advance. “A lot of managers will say, ‘We’re going to do a contest for how many appointments you have.’ And all they go by is that Sally said she has 10 appointments, and John said he has five, but they don’t ever sit down before the show and say, ‘Walk me through these 10 appointments.’”

Preparing for appointments means finding out what the client is looking for and determining whether it’s in stock or needs to be ordered. “All that most retailers care about is appointments and traffic coming in, but they don’t think about efficiency,” she says. “How many salespeople do you have? How many appointments do you have? How are you going to deal with this number of appointments?

“There’s no POS system that tells you, based on the engagement ring they bought, what the matching wedding band is. So, the salesperson needs to go in, find the style number of the engagement ring, look in the system, see if they have the wedding band, search through the cases, call the vendor. It’s a process.”

If the purpose of the event is to sell both wedding bands and engagement rings or other more expensive diamond jewelry, schedule wedding band appointments on a preview day before the main event so that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the focus can be on larger transactions.

It’s also efficient to match the customer with the right salesperson and have somebody directing traffic at the door. Says Crabtree: “When someone says they want to look at wedding bands, give them to your salesperson who sells the least, rather than your No. 1 person. And move your No. 1 salesperson to the person that’s coming in for a $20,000 ring, because they probably have a better chance of selling them.”

STEP 4. Think about the most effective
way to throw a holiday party.

Separate ladies’ and men’s nights are fraught with potential pitfalls. “I’ve seen so many parties that are just a waste of time,” Crabtree says. “All the women are getting drunk. They’re supposedly making wish lists, but then the men come in and they want to sit and play poker and they don’t even look at the wish lists. The best idea for a holiday party is to combine it with a trunk show and invite top vendors, inform VIP customers about the extra inventory, and invite men and women together.”

Jo Goralski, owner of The Jewelry Mechanic in Oconomowoc, WI, can relate to the pitfalls of an alcohol-fueled, gender-segregated event after hosting a gem show for a group of professional women with an affinity for wine. “Drunk as skunks, with no sales,” she says. “The last one left at 1 a.m. We swore, ‘Never again!’”

Evangeline Ross of Zachary’s Jewelers in Annapolis, MD, found a way to include couples in the wish list tradition when she created a publication filled with photos of clients who were recently engaged or married and called it the Bridal Yearbook. The focus was more on the couples than on their rings.

“All of these couples are already in our CRM, but a lot of times we don’t have the bride’s information,” she says. So, they invited 100 couples to come to an event at the store. Using their own phones, they were asked to take a photo of a link to the CRM and invited to take pictures of three things on their wish lists.

The event ensured that Zachary’s had their email addresses, cell phone numbers and wish lists, too. And if they participated in the wish list, they received an extra raffle ticket to a diamond pendant drawing. It also created a memorable experience for clients and created a foundation on which to foster a long-term relationship.

STEP 5. Follow up!

Krystal Shiklanian of Radiant Fine Jewelry in Plymouth, MI, has a degree in marketing. “Clienteling is the way to keep up your sales and events. Layered with direct mail, email blast, social media and follow up! My motto is, ‘There’s fortune in the follow up.’”

John Carter, owner of Jack Lewis Jewelers in Bloomington, IL, has learned through experience that RSVPs and follow-up are essential to a successful, popular event.

“The problem is, your best customers mean to come, but if you don’t collect RSVPs, you can’t follow up to remind them,” Carter says. “It is key to getting people there, and it lets me curate a specific group of people. Just make it personal, especially with a text.”

Stephenie Bjorkman of Sami Fine Jewelry adds urgency to her request for an RSVP, signaling that there’s a limit to how many people can attend. “You’ve got to call and text and remind them, like a doctor’s appointment. I create the event and market it, I feel passionate about it, and so I stay on it and make sure the staff calls the clients.”

Consultant Kathleen Cutler says of those invited to an event, 50 percent will RSVP, and of those, half will attend. Of those who attend, 20 percent will buy, although not necessarily during your event. So for every one sale you hope to make, plan to invite 20 people to your holiday experience. Aside from sharing an invitation to your email and social media audiences, personalized invitations should go out to your guest list along with same-week and same-day reminders.

PROVEN PARTY PLANS

Retailers share their own experiences with creating and implementing successful events

Know Your Audience

Sami’s Fine Jewelry
Scottsdale, AZ

Stephenie Bjorkman, owner of Sami’s Fine Jewelry, has tried every possible type of event from the silly to the sublime. With “Love in the Hills,” she periodically attempts to break a Guinness World Record for the number of people renewing their wedding vows at the same time, appropriately scheduled for Valentine’s Day.

One of the events she calls silly, dubbed Unicornia, carried a serious message to lighten up. After the pandemic cooled, Bjorkman and her staff wanted to banish all bad vibes in the store, so they hosted Unicornia, during which the staff wore rainbow colors, sprouted unicorn horns, and banned all talk of disease or politics. “It put a smile on people’s faces,” Bjorkman says. “I won’t say I sold a $20,000 ring because of Unicornia, but it makes us memorable. And when you dress in rainbows and wear unicorn horns, it’s hard to be a d—.”

Everyday is an event at Sami Fine jewelry; clockwise from above, Unicornia, a renovation party and a VIP customer appreciation bash.

Just stepping into Sami Fine Jewelry at any time can turn out to be an event. For example, once a client brought a horse named Fury in to pick up a custom piece of jewelry made for Fury’s tack, creating an impromptu event.

For Cinco de Mayo, Bjorkman hired a taco truck, gave away free tacos and margaritas and played mariachi music on repeat. “Someone isn’t going to get a free taco and walk in and say I want to buy something, but they’re going to remember you,” she says.

After remodeling the whole store, Bjorkman invested close to $50,000 in a VIP customer appreciation party that was a successful sales event, although it wasn’t advertised that way. She rented a twinkle tent for the back parking lot to set the scene, gave away a 10-carat Arizona amethyst in a mini-cake, and invited a wine maker to talk about the wine she was serving. “We just made it fun with live music and fire tables and wine pairings.” Of 20,000 people on her contact list, she invited 1,000; 200 RSVP’d. Guests circulated between the parking lot party, where they felt pampered, to the store, where sales staff helped with purchases. Between the party and subsequent purchases, she had the best holiday sales in the store’s history.

Other occasions that somehow turned into successful sales events have been birthday parties for staff and family members. Stephenie’s mom, Sami, who founded the business, is one of the honorees, as is Stephenie herself. “This year, I got married,” Bjorkman says, “so we had an after party and it was a really successful selling night. So next, I’m going to have an anniversary party.”

She’s proactive about getting the word out with a strong social media presence, direct mail and direct contact via phone.

And while she wishes every client made an appointment, that hasn’t worked out for parties. “Appointments are not my clients’ style. They do what they want when they want to do it. Wealthy people, especially, when they’re ready to buy, you service them. They’re late and busy and don’t show up or don’t text. When they do show up, it’s six at once and they all want YOU.”

Stephenie Bjorkman gets into the spirit of a Barbie-themed takeover in the store.

Most recently, she had a “Barbie takeover” in the store, backed up by social media highlighting jewelry Barbie might like. The staff dressed in pink, obviously.

“We do silly, stupid stuff, but it’s not for everyone,” Bjorkman says. “I can’t see some jewelry stores doing this. Our store is fun.”

The Designer Event

Greenwich St. Jewelers
New York, NY

Greenwich St. Jewelers hosts two events in the store every month, most of them trunk shows, with a guest designer. For added interest, they turn many of them into experiential events they call activations.

For example, in June 2022, they hosted an aura photography experience to launch the ASTRA collection of zodiac constellation charms, designed by owner Jennifer Gandia. They partnered with an astrologer who gave readings. And an aura photographer took guests’ photographs and explained what the colors in the photo indicated about their personality, the energy the color represented and the best way to harness that energy. In addition, a “color witch” conducted a specialized tarot card reading focused on color, and the staff helped each guest choose Jamie Joseph power rings with colors that complemented the reading.

Designer events at Greenwich St. Jewelers often include interactive activities to create the ultimate experience. The team hosts two events nearly every month.

Grace Barretti, senior marketing manager, says the team sets a goal before every event. Not all of the goals are strictly focused on sales. For example, for a chic moms’ group, there was a charity element, with the goal to build awareness in their new neighborhood and support the charity, whether or not they made any money.

“If you focus on one KPI, it’s more successful,” Barretti says. “For that event, the awareness element was the key factor. How many people came who hadn’t been there? Did they post on social media? Are we getting more site visits? Sales will come later, now that all this awareness has been built.”

For any Jamie Joseph designer event, the Greenwich St. team knows there is a dedicated group of fans who want to see new pieces immediately. “The goal is definitely sales” in that case.

The marketing effort is never limited to one strategy. The sales team contacts their clients by text and email, marketing emails are sent to the newsletter list, it’s boosted on Instagram and it’s listed in the Tribeca Citizen, a neighborhood newsletter. The marketing team develops a calendar for how often and when team members will post about it. They also collaborate with the designer to ensure their team is promoting the event to their own dedicated followers. “We really encourage booking an appointment for an event so somebody is dedicated to that person when they come in, especially if there is a designer present. We want to make sure they can meet with the designer they’re hoping to see.”

They also hosted a private debut event for Muzo Emerald Colombia’s Here We Are capsule collections during New York City Jewelry Week. They’ve sponsored the Here We Are program, an initiative designed to address inequity and lack of representation of minority designers in the jewelry industry, since its inception.

Greenwich St. schedules events throughout the year, into early December. But the second half of December is focused on sales and being available for last-minute shoppers.

The Book of Fun People

K. Hollis Jewelers
Batavia, IL

When Karen Hollis dreams up a new event, she turns to her “Book of Fun People” and can always find a crowd ready to party. She invited shoppers to sign up in a notebook and volunteer their contact information in exchange for a steady stream of party invitations.

They’re all flattered to be called “fun people.”

“We already know they are going to show up and bring their friends and that they would love to get a phone call,” Hollis says. “Which means you already have 100 people excited about your events.”

The general goal is to get people into the store. So, she has periodic fashion shows, drawing on merchandise from her jewelry collection as well as the clothing boutique side of her business. She runs an Edge report for those events and identifies everyone who’s made a purchase from the boutique inventory. She invites customers to be models and offers them a discount in exchange. “They bring their family to watch them model,” she says.

She makes note of how many new people show up for each event to judge her success. “I’m still meeting three to five new customers a day, so that’s exciting.”

Being known as a fun place to be has its rewards; nearly 100 percent of engagement ring shoppers return for their wedding bands without any monetary incentives.

She’s planning a cross-promotion with a distillery owner called Bourbon and Beer, which is likely to sell out and which will widen her email list. “Partnering with like-minded businesspeople is important,” she says.

She also hosts micro-parties for individuals. “It doesn’t have to be large,” she says. “It could just be a guy coming in for his anniversary, and I’ll say, ‘Why don’t we create a shopping experience? That will be the surprise. And you can bring your family in.’ We do a lot of that. Fifteen people coming into the store for a special occasion shopping experience.”

The Customer Appreciation Event

Continental Diamond
Minneapolis, MN

At Continental Diamond, it’s a tradition to host as many as a dozen Minnesota Vikings players at an annual Christmas party, where they sign autographs.

“It’s a party that cannot be duplicated because getting 12 or 15 professional football players to come to a party at one time is unheard of,” says owner Jimmy Pesis. “We do it year after year after year. We have had some of the biggest stars of the team come to these parties.”

Prior to COVID shutdowns, the event attracted between 500 and 600 people. “Everybody bleeds purple in Minnesota,” Pesis says. “It’s by far the biggest sports attraction in Minnesota. And when people think of Continental Diamonds, they think of the Minnesota Vikings. It’s not uncommon to walk in here and see a player shopping or getting a repair.”

Minnesota Vikings players and giveaways attract a crowd to the annual Continental Diamond customer appreciation event.

Their appreciation for their customers extends to three open bars, plenty of food, raffles of Viking memorabilia and jerseys, and gift-card giveaways to the store as well as to restaurants. The crowd spills out of the showroom and fills up the building’s spacious atrium.

“We’re not trying to sell anyone anything,” says salesperson/buyer Andy Furman. “It’s more of a thank you, and it’s fun. We’re building goodwill and solidifying relationships with our clients.” Adds Pesis, “But if they want to buy jewelry, we won’t tell them to come back tomorrow.”

Staff members who embrace the store’s core value of hospitality are the underlying reason for its success. “What Jimmy said to me was we want to treat every customer that comes in here like my mother,” says manager Beth Kato. “I still say that when I’m looking to hire. It’s about building relationships and empowering our team to make decisions based on what is best for the customer. You can have one negative vibe, and it permeates the whole store.”

In the spring and fall, they also host more traditional ring selling events and invite eight to 12 vendors to join them. For those events, they book 100 to 150 appointments.

Community Ladies’ Night

Blue River Diamonds
Peabody, MA

At Blue River Diamonds, manager Becky Bettencourt and her team have found a way to stand out during an annual December ladies’ night that involves the whole downtown community. During the event, all the Main Street stores in Gloucester, MA, are open, serving food and beverages and making sales.

“We see hundreds of people walk through the door, and for the past few years we’ve been giving away LED crowns to everyone who walks in, and they are massively popular,” Bettencourt says. “Customers wait yearly for our new crowns, and the line is out the door as soon as Ladies Night starts.

“People love to feel like a kid again with their blinking crowns. Last year, our crowns were yellow and blue to raise awareness for Ukraine, and we even set up a donation booth that raised $2,000 for a Ukranian charity.”

Everyone in town seems to anticipate the release of Blue River’s annual LED crowns.

Owner Neal Van Dam says sales are decent during the evening, but the point is making an impression: “I thought it would be a fun thing for the town we’re in.” Gloucester, an old-fashioned fishing village, isn’t known for its bling, so giving out 146 lighted, blinking crowns makes a big impact when dozens of kids are dancing in the streets wearing them, and every woman and girl in the corner drugstore has one on, too. “We get people who do shop, but a lot of people are there for the first time and ask us questions.”

More sales happen later.

“It reminds people that we’re there, and the week or two after the event, we will have a lot of men come in and say, ‘When my wife was here, she saw this ring or this pendant,’” Bettencourt says.

A community Christmas tree adds to the magic of downtown Gloucester’s holiday ladies night event.

Bettencourt also planned a gemstone and design event to increase awareness of the store’s collection of colored gemstones and custom work. It was the first direct selling event she’d tried; usually, the store partners with the town. The success of the gemstone event gave her confidence that she can build an annual event and create excitement around it. “One of our biggest sales was from a couple who were tourists who happened to stop in, buy a couple of gemstones and design a piece of jewelry, a spur of the moment thing.”

She always posts photos and blogs about the blinking crowns for ladies’ night. For the gemstone event, she posted each completed design to create excitement about the next gemstone event.

The Grand Opening

IW Marks
Houston, TX

“Hosting events has always been part of who we are,” says Raymond Golden, general manager of IW Marks. “We like to connect with the community.”

A recent major renovation was designed with hosting in mind, and the first event was a grand opening bash that drew several hundred people. They set up a tent in the parking lot, partnering with a local brewery and hiring a popular barbecue company to cater. Country singer Clay Walker performed. “We try not to do the same thing every party,” Golden says. “Depending on the tone of the party and time of day, they each have their own identity.”

IW Marks works with PR Boutique to get the word out about events and also sends press releases to the Associated Press, the Houston Chronicle and Modern Luxury magazine, backed by a significant social media campaign about three weeks prior to the event. Traditional digital advertising and local newspaper email blasts also reach a lot of people.

Brad and Joanna Marks, at right, hosted an I W Marks’ 45th anniversary party in May in the store’s recently renovated space, which they christened with an earlier grand opening bash.

“We like to have some type of live entertainment, whether it’s local bands, a local trio, violinists, pianists,” he says. The entertainment isn’t limited to music, however. They’ve also brought in magicians, tarot card readers, face painters and caricature artists.

Communicate with all teams involved, Golden says. The sales team is responsible to reach out to clients, the target audience. “But we also communicate with the marketing team, making sure they understand the message, as well as our event planning team. We have biweekly meetings with the heads of each of those teams.

“In December we do two events: a small private event for our best customers, partnering with a designer who will have exclusive offerings, and then a larger event for several vendor partners who come for two or three days. We pick a charity to partner with, and a portion of proceeds go to that. That is part of who we are, we’re philanthropic in everything we do.

“And we always do a big party for the staff and our business partners, 50 or 60 people, not even in the store, but in a separate venue. It’s just as important that the staff is appreciated and that our partners are truly our partners, whether they are vendors, designers, the marketing company, and their teams.”

The Brain Squad Shares Ideas For Successful Events

• “Gemstone roundtables continue to be our best event. We sign people up through the year as we meet new and see old friends who have a particular love of color gemstones.” — Terry Gibson, Studio D Jewelers, Woodstock, IL
• “The one that is always a hit is our pre-holiday sale. We do it the Thursday before Thanksgiving. We give 40% of all in store merchandise (with some exclusions) from 6 to 8 p.m. with food trucks outside.” — Michael Kanoff, Michaels Jewelers, Yardley, PA
• “I am the chair for our local Chamber’s women-in-business group, SHE (See Her Empowered). We had a ladies night at our store for the SHE group, where we gave styling tips, talked about how to create an ensemble, and let the ladies make wish lists while enjoying light hors d’oeuvres, chocolate, and wine.” — Kim Hatchell, Galloway & Moseley, Sumter, SC
• “I have done a Gem Legacy charity component for our last several wedding band trunk shows and our clients love it! We make a $25 donation for every ring sold then have our customers choose from two initiatives they want the money to go. It has led to some really great discussions and lets our customers know that we are involved with a fantastic charity.” — Melissa Quick, Steve Quick Jeweler, Chicago
• “Our parties are epic! It’s a blend of old customers and new along with friends of Malka Diamonds. The vibe is always hopping. We highlight a designer and a local restaurant for our catering. There is always a few signature cocktails and mock tails in the mix as well.” — Ronnie Malka, Malka Diamonds, Portland, OR
• “We always do well with a piercing event party; also we do a summer solstice party in late June to celebrate the longest day of sunshine.” — Laura Kitts’s, Gem Jewelry Boutique, Oak Park, IL.

The post Want a Successful Store Event? Check Out These Party-Worthy Ideas appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

From left to right: Trey Bailey, Kevin Reilly, Craig Rottenberg

“WE’VE DISSECTED THAT,” says Trey Bailey, CEO of Bailey’s Fine Jewelry in North Carolina. “Sometimes the engagement ring comes from where the guy lives, from his family jeweler, and then the mom and sisters of the girl are excited and they go wedding band shopping at her hometown jeweler.

That’s part of it.

“I’ve heard this theory, too, that there is a lot of work and research on the engagement ring, and when that’s done, they might be traveling somewhere or in the mall and the girl decides to stop and try on wedding bands, and sees something she likes and just buys it.”

Although there’s no silver bullet to selling the band, Bailey’s offers 15 percent off a wedding band with the purchase of an engagement ring and has bridal and engagement ring sales, during which bands are sold. But more important than any of that is knowing the client, staying in touch and using the CRM system. “The strategy at Bailey’s is to be proactive,” Bailey says.

Of course, independent jewelers with good customer service skills are in a prime position to pick up new clients who were not satisfied with their engagement ring shopping experience.

Tom R. Nelson of Nelson Jewelry in Spencer, IA, for example, is amazed, he says, by how many people buy bands from him who didn’t even shop his store for the engagement ring. He attributes that to poor customer service elsewhere. “Chain stores seem awesome until they actually make the purchase,” he says.

During a webinar called “Unleashing the Untapped Power of Wedding Bands,” sponsored by the Plumb Club and Platinum Guild International, PGI’s Kevin Reilly says that since, according to a Knot.com survey, 89 percent of engaged couples plan to purchase wedding bands, it’s nearly a guaranteed sale.

“Why would we as an industry ignore a guaranteed sale?” he says. “The engagement ring is all about the promise, but the wedding bands are all about the commitment. Together, these are the two pieces of jewelry that symbolize the most important relationship in a couple’s lives.”

Severine Ferrari of Engagement.com believes that the issue often is a question of timing. “That’s where there is a blind spot in the industry,” she says. “If you wait too long, then there’s no budget left,” she says.

Craig Rottenberg, president of Boston-based Long’s Jewelers, says that although some customers inquire about bands on Day 1, most do not, and retailers may balk at suggesting a second sale. “We as a retailer have a lot of fear that not only do you have to make this big purchase, possibly the biggest purchase you’ve ever made, but now you have to buy something else. It should be part of the process, but it can come toward the end of the sales presentation.”

If retailers wait too long to broach the subject and customers put it off, not only will the budget be claimed by other wedding necessities, but the couple could be scrambling at the last minute to place an order and have the bands delivered in time.

Rordan Shane, CEO and president of Shane Co., says Shane stores are more likely to lose the sale of the groom’s band, rather than the bride’s, often due to procrastination or a lack of belief in the importance of the product. “Maybe there’s a week till the wedding, so he’ll grab it online or when he’s doing his grocery shopping at a large national chain that may sell jewelry as well. Then what I hear out on the street, is, ‘Oh, yeah, I got this ring right before the wedding, but I wish I would have put a little time, energy and effort into it.’ Because it is something you’re going to wear for the rest of your life.”

Rottenberg notices both extremes of shoppers when it comes to timing. “We will have some folks come in and their wedding is nine months away, sometimes 18 months away, and a large number will say, ‘We’re getting married in a week or two weeks.’ So some are way ahead of the curve and some are last-minute shoppers. It’s the last thing on their list. We can accommodate both.”

Another issue, Shane says, is when a couple are shopping together for the engagement ring and the bride-to-be falls in love with a band but doesn’t make note of exactly which one it is and can’t find it later. “Some of the most stressful moments come when that band is not the band they remember from the day they bought their engagement ring. Or if they come in days before the wedding and either it’s not in their size or they need a special order.” Shane says it’s important to make sure those style preferences are captured in some way.

Dianna Rae High, owner of Dianna Rae Jewelry in Lafayette, LA, says her staff is trained to discuss the band during the initial engagement conversation. That discussion is reinforced by signs around the store, saying, “Ask me how to get 20% off your wedding band.” If her client buys both the diamond and mounting from her, she gives them 20% off both the men’s and the ladies’ bands. “We continue to send them emails or texts about wedding bands with the 20% off if they qualify. Our clients almost always come back for the band.”

Sherrie Schilling-Devaney of Sherrie’s Jewelry Box in Tigard, OR, encourages couples to purchase the wedding bands right away and eases budget concerns by inviting them to put the purchase on layaway.

There’s also room for a larger sale.

The average spent on women’s bands is $1,100 and men’s, $550. Reilly suggested that focusing attention on a more special ring, particularly for men, is one way to grow that part of the business. And with recent trends, including stacking, the number of bands is no longer limited. “It’s no longer two people, one ring each,” he says. “Now it’s two people and who knows how many rings. The category can be expanded far beyond what we traditionally think about.”

With a recent focus on men’s jewelry, many men are putting more thought into what kind of ring they want. “We have seen a shift,” Rottenberg says. “Going back 10 or 15 years, my experience is that most men wanted a simple gold or platinum band. But now men have embraced that wedding band as a great way to express themselves.

“Many men’s bands are more substantial, more precious, more unique, more of a statement in some way. And our vendor partners have come up with some really interesting things. On the high end, it can be wearable art. We’ve had a lot of success and growth with this as more men move away from the traditional gold band.”

Ferrari says more couples want rings that are similar to one another, with both partners opting for a unisex style with emeralds or diamonds or the same metal. “In Europe, it’s more common to get the same wedding band, but it’s a trend that’s growing here, too,” she says. Ferrari also suggests approaching the bride-to-be, who may want to upgrade the groom’s ring to add something special to the story of their relationship.

In June, Tacori introduced its Couples Collection: gender-neutral, size-inclusive diamond bands made to mix, match or stack. Nadine Tacorian Arzerounian, Tacori’s head of design, began to notice couples choosing eternity bands and fine jewelry rings in lieu of engagement rings and men’s bands. “We’ve seen modern couples who want to celebrate love authentically, in their own way and on their own terms, stepping away from the traditional category conventions,” says Arzerounian. “While engagement rings still hold a prominent place in both society and in our product assortment, we were excited to capture this evolving trend.”

THE BAND
EVENT

Melissa Quick of Steve Quick Jewelers in Chicago says a wedding band trunk show each spring has helped sell more bands. Every February, they personally invite everyone who has bought an engagement ring in the past two years but who has not yet purchased a wedding band from them. “When we deliver an engagement ring, we mention the trunk show to plant the seed.”

Rottenberg transforms the inventory at Long’s largest store (10,000 square feet) into all wedding bands, creating an incredible selection from Long’s suppliers and attracting 1,500 to 2,000 people over a three-day event, many of whom bought their engagement rings elsewhere. “A significant number of the sales are new to us,” he says.

He describes the event as “wedding band heaven” for shoppers because the selection is so vast. “There are so many options for almost any configuration you can think of.” Although they partner with restaurants and other complementary retailers for prizes, the real draw is checking the band off the to-do list during an event well known to the community.

Eric Stevens, president of Stevens Jewelers in Springfield, MA, plans an attention-grabbing BOGO wedding band event every February, soon after Valentine’s Day, that he promotes as a free wedding band. The key to the BOGO strategy is to make sure the markup is at least 2.5. Remarkably, as many as 60% of brides-to-be at the event select two bands for themselves to stack. In those cases, Stevens offers a 40 percent discount on the guy’s band. “We’ve been doing it over 20 years,” he says. “In a good year, we sell about 100 wedding bands in a weekend and in a slow year, 30 to 40.”

Another lure is a chance at a free cruise with the purchase of a $1,500 or $2,000 band.

There’s a mix of clients and newcomers at the event, so Stevens allows clients who’ve already purchased the engagement ring to make appointments or invites them to a VIP appointment in the days leading up to the event so they don’t have to wait in line during what can be a chaotic event.

“We build some hype going into it, and people are aware that we do it annually,” he says. “The margins are very small, but the whole point is you’re gaining a client you may not have had. Our focus has been to gain the client more than the sale itself.”

Stevens works with his vendors to have up to 1,000 different wedding bands in stock. Custom-designed rings are not included in the promotion. He also promotes interest-free financing through Synchrony.

MAKE SURE
THEY RETURN

Peter Hannes, sales manager for Craig Husar Jewelers, says making contact with every customer who bought an engagement ring in the past year or two should be automatic. “Reach out to see if they’ve sent a date (hint: Google them, and you can find a lot of dates on couples on The Knot) and remember that anything inside of a year is ‘coming up soon’ and they should set an appointment to look at wedding bands.”

Sometimes it’s as simple as making a return visit seem routine.

After the proposal, John Carom of Abby’s Gold & Gems in Uniontown, PA, invites couples to return to have the engagement ring checked and cleaned. They’re given a swag bag that includes a discount coupon. “We mention the wedding band during the diamond engagement ring sale and continue to mention it (without being pushy) at every opportunity.”

Tim Sherrer of Lou’s Jewelry, Mobile, AL, has an 88 percent return rate for wedding bands within the first year. “We ask the guy to return with the new fiancée to make sure the engagement ring fits, so she gets to meet the sales staff and feel comfortable in the store,” he says. “We also give her a small gift and let her know if she needs anything to please call us.”

Once the engagement ring purchase is wrapped up, says John Thomas Mead of Albuquerque, NM, the couple is encouraged to return every six months for a warranty inspection.

ALLOYS EXPAND
SELECTION

From left to right: Janelle Mead, John Thomas Mead, Eric Stevens

Mead’s store, John Thomas Jewelers, is on the third floor of an office building in Albuquerque, NM, and boasts an overall 90 percent closing rate. “It seems like by the time they have found us, they’ve done their research, their homework,” he says. “Once they’re in, I keep my diamond prices competitive, close to that of major websites.”

Nearly 70 percent of the business is focused on weddings, and he sells many more bands than engagement rings by unit. Mead sold 246 bands in 2020 with an average price of $1,217 and an average 2.5 markup. “Part of that is they may find out about us after they buy the engagement ring, and the man gets one, the woman gets one, or more than one, because women stack them.” If a guy is shopping solo for engagement rings, he is shown men’s bands at the same time, either for an immediate sale or to plant a seed.

Mead stocks almost all alloy samples, with $241,000 in live, owned inventory and $2.7 million in sales. As a Preferred Jeweler, he also offers a free lifetime national warranty. Clients can visit any other Preferred Jeweler in the country and have their rings serviced for free. Mead pays the first year of insurance, too, on any ring $1,500 and up.

Even the design of the store facilitates band sales.

All varieties of rings are available to play with due to the store’s drawer displays. “Because it’s all alloy and all on the customer side, they can open the drawers without having to keep pointing through the glass at what they want to see.” The average sale has gone up as a result. Men are spending more on bridal, both engagement rings and wedding bands, because women aren’t shy about reaching in and trying on something bigger and flashier than they might have otherwise.

“Very seldom do we not have what they’re looking for,” he says. “We will also custom make alternative metal rings through Heavy Stone rings. Or if it’s precious metals, we will open up our phone or iPad and show them some men’s custom rings that we’ve done, and when you throw that much selection at them, they will focus on something they like.”

DESIGN
SENSE

Denise Oros of Linnea Jewelers in LaGrange, IL, says it’s vital to get clients thinking about the overall aesthetic and the rings as a set that together make a design statement.

One of the first questions the Linnea custom design team asks when the engagement ring is purchased is, “Are we thinking a flush fit band or a shadow band?” That single question helps immediately identify aspects of a bride’s style while also bringing up the band purchase in a natural way.

“Creating custom engagement rings and having a significant diamond band selection along with unique wedding band options gets couples talking from concept to completion on what would enhance their unique engagement ring,” Oros says.

Guys wanting to surprise their girlfriends are encouraged to work with Oros’ team to design the engagement ring, equipped with Linnea’s Sherlock Holmes Detective Package that helps them determine budget, finger size, metal preference and style. They often return for wedding bands because he invested time and thought in the purchase and tells her the story of navigating the design process and executing the planning for the proposal.

Joseph Villarreal of Villarreal Fine Jewelers in Austin, TX, emphasizes the fit. “We create engagement rings with the idea that a matching band will fit flush/properly with the engagement for a perfect fit,” he says.

A LIFETIME
OF LOYALTY

Harvey Rovinsky and Karen Hollis

At Bernie Robbins Jewelers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, sales consultants offer $250 off bands at the time of the engagement ring purchase while clients are excited and in a buying mood, says owner Harvey Rovinsky.

Their efforts don’t stop there, though.

“In our CRM system, we have a tickler that lets salespeople know when the wedding is, and three months prior, we reach out to the client again and offer the wedding band promotion,” he says. “We work hard to capture that business. We want to encourage repeat business and multiple sales.”

It’s important to Rovinsky to develop lifetime loyalty well beyond the wedding.

“When we sell an engagement ring, we have the client from cradle to grave. They know that when they need an anniversary, birthday, holiday or push present, we have exactly what they need for those occasions. We have a sophisticated CRM and staff is constantly clienteling.”

Marc Majors of Samuel L. Majors in Midland, TX, says clients return for the band because of expertise and the relationship they build. He believes having too wide a selection can actually be detrimental. “We don’t have a large bridal collection, and our offerings are very tailored.

I think people like that they can come in here and not be engulfed by hundreds of options and talking to salespeople who only know how to read tags.”

JUST MAKE
THEM HAPPY

But Bob Goodman, owner of Robert Goodman Jewelers in Zionsville, IN, says when his clients return for a wedding band, it’s not due to a strategy or an event. “If someone returns to our store, it’s probably because they had a happy experience,” he says.

Karen Hollis, for example, of K. Hollis Jewelers in Batavia, IL, achieves an almost 100 percent return rate that she attributes to letting her customers play. “We make wish lists when the girl comes in to see what she likes, and we take good notes and let the guy know that he did the hard part and that we can’t wait to show her the band choices that work with her engagement ring,” Hollis says.

And Gary Zimmerman, owner of Windy City Diamonds in Chicago, sells bands to engagement ring clients better than 99% of the time. “I believe that it’s our reputation and the fact that our clients have been happy with the work we did for them on their engagement ring,” he says.

The post Here’s How to Make Sure That Engagement Ring Client Returns for the Wedding Band appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

to America’s Coolest Stores 2023!

Our six America’s Coolest and additional 10 Cool Stores — each of which will be featured in INSTORE issues through summer 2024 — represent outstanding achievements in creativity, marketing savvy, company culture and individuality.

Each year, judges with expertise in architecture and store design, retail operations, visual merchandising, marketing and branding evaluate stores in multiple categories: the brand story, the look, the marketing, online presence, and what we here at INSTORE believe is the key to cool — individuality. As in past years, we divided the entries into two categories: Big Cool and Small Cool, based on staff size.

There is no one secret formula for being cool. And that may be the point. Each store is cool in its own way, and this year’s winners are cool in many ways that set them apart.

AMERICA’S COOLEST STORES 2023 SPONSORS

Greenwich St. Jewelers is designed to reflect its downtown New York environment, both pretty and gritty. Owners Jennifer Gandia and Christina Gandia Gambale demonstrate a commitment to maintaining a full-service shop in their Tribeca community and a dedication to sustainability and diversity within their company and within the jewelry industry as a whole.

Eliza Page was the first retail business to open in the 2nd Street District in downtown Austin. The original store was designed by owner Elizabeth Gibson with a flexibility that anticipated the recent renovation and updates, during which a permanent bracelet station and a private ear piercing room were added.

If you haven’t taken the time to enter yet, please consider doing so when we open the contest for entries again this month. Retailers have told us that the application process alone is motivational because it requires them to assess all aspects of their businesses and get around to things they’d been putting off, like having professional photos taken of their store interior and head shots of themselves.

And if you entered and weren’t chosen this time, feel free to update your entry and try again.

Thanks to all who took the time to enter this year.

The post America’s Coolest Stores 2023 Winners Revealed! appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

Today, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health issue in the U.S., affecting one in three adults, according to data from the National Institute of Mental Health. The rates are even higher among business owners, with one recent study from the University of California, San Francisco finding half of all entrepreneurs surveyed suffered from conditions such as anxiety and depression. The reasons likely have to do with the wide-ranging responsibilities business owners shoulder as well as their constant focus on the vagaries of the future.

Jewelry retailers appear no different. According to INSTORE’s Brain Squad of owners and managers, when asked what is contributing to their level of anxiety right now, it’s everything from the increased amount of custom and repair jobs to a lack of walk-in traffic and quality employees to the nightly news on television. The concerns can be broad-based: As Georgie Gleim of Gleim the Jeweler in Palo Alto, CA, wrote, it’s the “overall level of angst floating around. The general antagonistic tone of public conversations and outright fear for our democracy.” Or they can be closer to home, as described by David Blitt of Troy Shoppe Jewelers in Calgary, AB: “Going to court to testify at end of May for a robbery, moving to a new store in June and getting married at end of July.”

From an evolutionary perspective, anxiety is easy to understand. It’s the emotion-fueled drive to know if a danger lurks around the bend. Compared to other animals, it gave humans a tremendous advantage. Of course, we no longer live on the savannah, and when we leave home, we can confidently assume we’ll return in one piece. Yet anxiety persists, a relentless fear-based planning scenario with no off-switch.

From a physiological standpoint, what happens when we get anxious is that a structure in the brain called the amygdala — the seat of fear — gets fired up and releases stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, as well as glucose, into the bloodstream. Our heart, sweat glands and mental faculties all ramp up. We are now primed for a fight (or flight) for survival … which is happening entirely in our heads. It’s discomforting and exhausting.

And it’s not even very good at defining or predicting danger. We’re notoriously terrible at assessing risk; we worry about all the wrong things. We rely on anecdotes rather than data. We fear events that bring vivid imagery to mind, such as shark or terrorist attacks, but not cheeseburgers and road accidents, though the latter are far more of a threat. Compounding the torment is that our brains seem wired to resist uncertainty. (You have may heard of studies showing most people would rather receive a shock now that’s twice as painful as receiving a random shock in the next 24 hours.)

For some people, those worries create a debilitating negative spiral that can take over their lives. (And if anxiety is inhibiting your ability to function, to work, sleep and do even simple things like go out of the house, we recommend you seek professional help.) Overthinking, ruminating and angst can limit our ability to enjoy life to the fullest while also limiting our professional growth.

The standard advice to deal with anxiety is to live more fully in the present — embrace the moment! Be here now! Bring calm to your mind. But that is fiendishly difficult to do, as anyone who has tried even the most basic mindfulness exercise can quickly attest.

What to do? There’s no quick fix. In short, dealing with anxiety essentially involves learning to roll with life’s punches and applying a heavy dose of reframing.

First, know that a life without challenge would be boring. Abandon your need to establish complete security, and you realize you never needed it in the first place.

Second, as the Stoics liked to say: The obstacle is the way. The path to growth is to do difficult things. Consider the writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s approach, which essentially involves treating anxiety like an annoying younger sibling. The trick isn’t to ignore fear or to worry, but to make space for it. She uses the analogy of a road trip. “Fear always comes along for the ride, and that’s fine — but that doesn’t mean you need to let it anywhere near the steering wheel.”

In the following pages, we suggest ways for you to do that, as well as tips provided by our readers, mental health experts and psychology writers on actions to take when anxiety strikes, strategies to help you cope, and ways to build your resilience.

PART ONE: Explore Your Anxiety

Divert Your
Attention

A screaming baby, faced with a grownup making silly noises, will often fall silent; it can’t focus on being distressed and intrigued at the same time. Adults aren’t so different (ever tried playing Sudoku while ranting internally?). It has to do with our limited attentional bandwidth and why even minor acts of distraction — listening to music and focusing intently on the words, doing some basic math, focusing on the needs of others — can be very good ways to silence negative thoughts or buy time until emotions die down. “If I am dealing with problems, either listening to an audiobook while doing yardwork or playing guitar (poorly) helps,” says Jon Walp of Long Jewelers in Virginia Beach, VA. It’s important to distinguish healthy distraction from unhealthy avoidance, however. Binging on Netflix for 20 hours is more like unhealthy avoidance when an issue obviously needs to be confronted.

Postpone
Your Worries

Not prepared to stare your fears in the face? Schedule a meeting with them for later. “Try setting aside 20 minutes every day, let’s say at 4:30 PM, just for your worries. If you are fretting at 10:00 AM, jot down the reason and resolve to think it through later,” Dr. Robert L. Leahy, director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, suggested to Real Simple. Safe in the knowledge that your concerns will be addressed, you can get on with your life. And it may just turn out that the issue vexing you will take care of itself in the meantime.

Ask
Questions

The unknown is the playground of anxiety. To identify the “unknown” that is bedeviling you, it helps to have a battery of questions. One of the best, from meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein, is: “Is this useful?” Worrying about an upcoming client meeting can feel like you’re doing something substantial about a potential problem, but in truth you’re not. This is particularly the case when it involves something you have no control over. Other helpful questions: “What’s the threat here? What am I actually afraid of? Have I heard this before?” Such questions fire off the prefrontal cortex, which can relieve the anxiety.

Play the
5-5-5 Game

Another way to halt ruminating about possible dire future events and get back to the present is to take stock of your immediate physical surroundings with a method known as the 5-5-5 game:

Look around and name five things you can see.
List five things you can hear.
Move five parts of your body you can feel (i.e., rotate your ankle, wiggle your ears, nod your head up and down).

Other physical interventions recommended as circuit-breakers for spiraling thoughts include taking a cold shower or dip in a pool, or sniffing lavender oil.

Breathe

The onset of anxiety has been compared to a hijacking of your amygdala, that more primal part of your brain responsible for your fight-or-flight response. The key is thus to re-engage your thinking brain, convince it you are actually safe, and talk your mind down from the edge. And one of the best ways to do that is with deep breathing, which raises oxygen levels and helps expunge the carbon dioxide that builds up when you’re stressed. “I do three slow breaths in a row, in through the nose and out through the mouth. It helps in the short term and gives me a little reset,” says Katrina Sustachek of Rasmussen Diamonds in Racine, WI. The 4-7-8 method (inhale for four seconds, hold for seven and exhale for eight) is probably the best known, but box breathing (instoremag.com/boxbreathing), a method used by the Navy SEALS that also involves slow, controlled breathing, is also proven to work, as does the double inhale championed by popular podcaster Dr. Andrew Huberman (instoremag.com/physiologicalsigh).

Dwell on the
Worst-Case
Scenario

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’” The world is a far less turbulent place than when Seneca uttered that thought 2,000 years ago, but it has lost none of its saliency. Articulate your deepest fears in fine detail and you’ll likely find you can handle whatever eventuates. The blogger Tim Ferriss, who has probably done as much as anyone to re-popularize Stoic thinking, recounts on his blog how he used this approach to tame fears related to a major life decision: “A funny thing happened: as soon as I cut through the vague unease and ambiguous anxiety by defining my nightmare, the worst-case scenario, I wasn’t as worried about taking the trip. Suddenly, I started thinking of (ways) to get back on track if all hell struck at once. I could always take a temporary bartending job to pay the rent. I could sell some furniture and cut back on eating out. I could steal lunch money from the kindergarteners who passed by my apartment every morning. The options were many. I realized it wouldn’t be that hard to get back to where I was, let alone survive. None of these things would be fatal—not even close.”

Talk the
Self-Talk

Cognitive therapy’s main insight — that how we think about a situation determines how we feel, so by addressing distorted thinking, we can feel better — is now such a self-help mainstay, it’s hard to appreciate how revolutionary it was 50 years ago. Yet, as well as its message is now understood, it is still easy to forget it when you feel yourself in the grip of anxiety. “It can be tricky at first, but these irrational ‘automatic thoughts’ that anxiety arouses usually come in the form of absolutistic musts, shoulds, oughts, and other demands such as ‘I must do well,’ ‘Others ought to treat me well,’ ‘Things need to work out the way I want them to,’” notes psychology blogger Eric Barker, citing the work of the pioneering cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis. This allows you to play a helpful game of “Find the Irrational Belief” when confronted with anxious feelings and then dispute it.

Next, turn those “musts” into realistic preferences. This thought: “I absolutely must do well during this presentation or my life is over,” can be converted into: “I’d like to do well, but if I don’t, it almost certainly won’t be that big a deal,” and the emotions will dial down.

Say an Affirmation

In the face of assault on our equanimity by anxiety, it can help to cling to short, positive statements to remind yourself that this mental storm is being caused by a transient and ultimately unimportant event. Such as:

• “It wasn’t that bad in the past.”
• “It won’t last forever. This too shall pass.”
• “This is going to be a good time … or a good story.”

Name
the Trap

According to Dan Harris, the broadcast journalist and author of Ten Percent Happier, naming or labeling the thought patterns bedeviling you converts the vague threat they pose into something concrete you can deal with. “Just labeling it, just calling it out, and saying it out loud … It’s the visibility that is the kryptonite for the ego,” he said on a recent podcast. Identifying the thoughts and telling yourself “This is a panic attack”/“This is catastrophizing”/“This is mind reading”/“This is fortune-telling”/“This is black and white thinking” … allows you to regain power by realizing you’ve encountered it before and survived.

Write It
Down

If you’re particularly prone to catastrophizing, health experts say it can help to get the thoughts out of your head and down on paper. Dr. Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Tomorrowmind, recommends creating an Anxiety Balance Sheet to turn your mental state around. The method: On a piece of paper, create four columns titled: “What Do I Know”/ “What Don’t I Know” / “What Can I Influence” and “What Can’t I Influence.” Then spend a few minutes filling in the columns. “About 80 percent of the people I’ve worked this through with are surprised that they have more items listed in columns one and three (the ‘good’ columns) than they do in columns two and four,” he told TIME. “Just the act of unpacking your anxiety bag and knowing what’s inside can have a profound effect on reducing your fear of the future.”

PART TWO: Coping with Anxiety

Unplug

Social media can serve as a salutary distraction (funny YouTube videos have been shown to help people deal with anxious thoughts) or to provide some validation or comfort via interaction with friends. But more often Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok — all of which are driven by algorithms designed to provoke emotional responses — will likely exacerbate negative feelings or just arouse guilt over wasted time. In his series of books on the theme of the benefits of doing “deep work” in an undistracted environment, Cal Newport has made a strong case for unplugging or setting strict boundaries around your phone use (e.g., leave it in your entryway when you return home). If unplugging is unrealistic, use the “mute,” “block,” “unfollow” or “not interested” functions to ensure that you are the one in control of the information flow.

Take Action …
Any Action

Action is the enemy of anxiety. Someone no less self-assured than Jeff Bezos has talked about how this plays out in his business life: “I find that as soon as I can identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first email, it dramatically reduces the stress I feel.” Thus, the advice when you feel yourself falling into rumination is to do something, anything! Jeremy Auslander of Roxbury Jewelry in Los Angeles writes, “I think the only answer is to push forward. Make more calls and emails to customers. Reach out to people that make good money in your area. Read the local magazines and congratulate individuals you see with articles written about them. Network. Work on the business.”

Yet, the problem is anxiety is also the enemy of action. When you’re feeling trapped by worry, it’s hard to raise the energy to do anything. The solution? Set the bar really low. As Nancy and Pierre Plante of Plante Jewelers in Swansea, MA, write, “Even the smallest step can relieve anxiety. It’s better than worrying and losing sleep. Analyze the situation and find one small thing you can do to get started.”

Try
Mindfulness

Meditation allows you to interrupt your thought patterns enough that you can break the cycle of anxiety. Focusing on some abstract element like your breath or a stone or a mantra creates a pause between the stimulus and the response. At a more proficient level, meditation allows you to examine your thoughts more deeply. “And that self-awareness, that regular sort of systematized collision we’re engineering in meditation with the voice in your head, is revolutionary because as soon as you start to see how chaotic your mind is, that’s the first step toward not being owned by it,” says Harris. In his book, The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer likens the chatter in your head to a crazy roommate. Through meditation, Singer says, you eventually learn to see your thoughts as distinct from you and learn to tell that roommate to shut up, to start justifying his claims, or at some level you just learn to dismiss them as a kind of paranoid rambling.

Eliminate
Stimulants

In THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY, Dr. Ellen Vora uses the phrase “false anxiety” to encompass the agitated state that can arise from not enough sleep, forgetting to eat breakfast, or simply too much coffee. An elevated heart rate, shaking hands, or a quivering voice could be a panic attack, or it could just be the result of six shots of caffeine. Be aware and cut back on your consumption if that’s you. And to those Brain Squad respondents who jokingly cited drinking as a coping mechanism — and we say this lovingly — that’s likely not helping either.

Learn From
the Past

The problems you’re experiencing today seem fraught and important, but that’s mainly because you’re so narrowly focused on the present. This is the reasoning behind the old suggestion to ask yourself if your worries will matter in a decade. But you can do better than look hopefully into the future — look at the past instead. Try this exercise, as recommended by Burkeman: Every morning, make a brief note of what feels like your biggest problem. As the list accumulates, you can review earlier entries. “Guess how many months it took for my former worries to seem laughably overblown? Five days: that’s how many months …” he writes. “But that wasn’t the interesting part: what stood out was how many times reality bore no relationship to anything I’d anticipated. I’d worry about some event going badly, but instead of going badly or well, it’d be canceled. I would worry about how I’d handle some crucial conversation, but by the time it arrived, circumstances had changed, and it wasn’t crucial at all. My gut feelings weren’t so much overly negative as simply irrelevant.”

Listen to
Music

A little over a decade ago, British musicians teamed up with sound therapists to engineer a song specifically designed to calm the nervous system by lowering a person’s heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The eight-minute song, called Weightlessness (instoremag.com/weightless), was found to reduce anxiety by up to 65 percent. “The song … contains a sustaining rhythm that starts at 60 beats per minute and gradually slows to around 50,” Lyz Cooper, founder of the British Academy of Sound Therapy, told INC. Magazine. “While listening, your heart rate gradually comes to match that beat.”

As Mark Twain so deftly put it 150 years ago: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

Mind
Sweep

The organizational guru David Allen has built a vast international following with the idea that getting stuff out of your head and onto a to-do list is a path to mental calm and achievement. “Nothing changes when you write things down except how you engage with your issues: You can be objective and also be creative and intuitive. Without exception, you will feel better,” he says. Allen’s Getting Things Done system starts with a “mind sweep,” meaning listing all the tasks and responsibilities that need tending to, and which typically takes a business owner six hours to complete. The second crucial principle is what Allen calls “next action” thinking — his version of the homily “a journey of a thousand miles,” but which also encompasses the problematic issue of prioritization. And finally, his “weekly review” — an hour or so spent going over the list of all long-term projects and short-term next actions — which he says is a must to keep you on track.

If the very idea of an endless to-do list causes you angst, add a Kanban system that stores all your to-dos out of sight and out of mind, other than for the tiny handful that you’re working on right now.

Bathe in
Nature

From 2004 to 2012, Japanese scientists spent $4 million studying the physiological impact of “forest bathing,” or spending time around trees. They found it reduces anxiety, boosts the immune system, and amplifies feelings of wellbeing. But you don’t need a forest. Time spent in any natural setting, parks, among animals (pets or wild) or near bodies of water can all relax the mind. As Jo Goralski of The Jewelry Mechanic in Oconomowoc, WI, says, “I have a meadow out my back gate that leads to a woods that has a small river running through it. If I need to destress, I head to the woods.”

For that matter, researchers at the University of Hyogo in Japan say that simply putting small plants on workers’ desks in an office “contributed to their psychological stress reduction regardless of their age or choice of plants.” The reason seems to be related to the way nature absorbs some of our attention in an undemanding way, giving us “cognitive quiet” and allowing our minds to relax as opposed to the relentless, aggressive demands on our attention made by much of the rest of the world, say U.S. academics Rachel and Stephen Kaplan.

Routine

The word “routine” can be a pejorative, but it can also be a mind saver. “Routines help reduce general feelings of anxiety and are often effective antidotes for those with more serious mental health disorders,” writes Charlotte Lieberman in the Harvard Business Review. “Doing the same thing at regular intervals signals to our brains that we are safe. Call it a routine, a ritual, an anchor — whatever resonates,” she says.

PART THREE: Building Resilience

Build Social
Connections

Humans have evolved to be social creatures, and yet much in modern society — from the way our cities are structured, to the myth of individualism, to social media — is eroding the bonds between us at the cost of our mental health. Reasserting the primacy of human connection in your life — by being deliberate in creating new friendships, socializing with the family and colleagues outside the home or workplace — can thus be vital to dealing with anxiety, not just by boosting mood, but having someone to talk to when assailed by anxiety. As the author and anxiety therapist Mike Shel puts it: “Until a person feels understood, all the information in the world, all the data, all the scientific understanding of the process and coping strategies are for naught. A person needs to feel that someone gets what they are struggling with.”

Stay
Healthy

Diet, rest and exercise. The science is clear: People who take care of themselves are less prone to anxious thoughts. According to neuroscientists out of UC Berkeley, when you don’t get enough sleep, your brain’s amygdala and insular cortex both light up in a pattern similar to the abnormal neural activity of people with anxiety disorders. Meanwhile, a large-scale study of almost 200,000 cross-country skiers found that being physically active halves the risk of developing clinical anxiety over time. There’s also another reason exercise can help with anxiety, jokes Beth Cevasco of Scott’s Custom Jewelers in Dublin, OH: “A good hard workout makes me so sore, I forget about everything but ibuprofen.”

Try
TRE

Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) are a self-help technique designed to help release deeply held physical and emotional tension stored in the body. Advocates say TRE helps to release this tension and restore balance and wellbeing, improving an individual’s ability to cope with stress and reducing anxiety. Yes, it seems a little kooky, but the evidence is robust, and if not much is working to reduce your anxiety, you may want to give it a try. You can watch an eight-minute introductory video here: instoremag.com/tre.

Reframe
Anxiety

Tech entrepreneur Naval Ravikant has wondered publicly if he would have been as successful if he weren’t anxious, because anxiety “makes you get off your butt.” It’s an interesting view and a reminder that true mental health comes from recognizing and accepting the complete spectrum of emotions. Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, told TIME we should relate to unpleasant emotions in a way “that’s more restorative — more growth- and learning-oriented.” Perhaps such feelings are a signal that we’re following the wrong path with our business or relationships. Instead of trying to erase this sensation, we should view anxiety as a tool.

Get Used to Being
Uncomfortable

None of this is to say anxiety will feel any better. Its evolutionary roots as a warning system mean it will always feel uncomfortable. Anxiety becomes maladaptive when it paralyzes. The answer is to appreciate that we humans are “anti-fragile” — we grow when challenged. When we know what’s required and can marshal the resources to cope with them, scary things become challenges rather than threats. In the words of the late psychologist Susan Jeffers, “feel the fear and do it anyway.”

MORE TIPS FOR RELIEVING ANXIETY

Trust in
Yourself

Trust that you have the physical and psychological resources to overcome this dreaded event that lies ahead. Talking of his propensity to fret about the unknown future, the writer Oliver Burkeman notes: “And of course the answer in every case — though apparently I need to keep relearning this lesson — is that we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We’ll figure it out then, based on what’s actually happening then, drawing on the internal and external resources we’ll have access to then. After all, when you stop to think about it, there isn’t really much of an alternative. When else can you cross a bridge, except when you come to it?”

Ask Yourself
For Advice

One of the cruel ironies of anxiety is that people often know the right responses when a friend or colleague is struggling with mental turmoil but can’t apply them when afflicted themselves. It is why health professionals recommend trying to add some distance to the problem, such as asking yourself what counsel you would offer a friend or a team member in a similar situation, or even talking to yourself in the third person. That’s what tennis great Ivan Lendl would do, as he explained via a post on MensTennisForum.com: “Say you’re nervous before a match, you admit it to yourself. You say, ‘Ivan is nervous today. But he’s going to snap out of it.’ You describe what you are feeling, and then you let go of it. And it’s over.”

Journal to
Unwind

It can seem at times that writing exercises are prescribed as a way to deal with every mental condition — and if you hated doing homework in high school (or work with words for a living), it’s probably the last thing you want to do. But the psychological benefits of externalizing thoughts via journaling are well-established, and you may indeed find the results revolutionary. There is no one set of best practice, but setting some rough guidelines for regular practice can help: Promise to do it for six minutes, or for three pages, do it first thing in the morning, destroy after finishing, archive them …. Whatever rules you come up, it’s usually best to keep the exercise solo, your own private domain to work through the thoughts that may be eating your mind. “Writing allows us to witness our thoughts as separate entities, to get them out of your head. Many of us are living life as if our thoughts are reality. Write down all your thought stream, uncensored. Let them flow and watch them leave the mind,” says the clinical psychologist Nicole LePera, author of HOW TO DO THE WORK.

Understand
the Triggers

According to some mental health literature, the 80/20 approach can also be applied to anxiety. Identify the 20 percent of issues or people that create 80 percent of your anxiety and seek ways to remove them from your life. If scrolling through social media leads to an unhealthy fixation on your appearance, avoid this specific trigger, Jodie Louise Russell, a doctoral student who studies the philosophy of rumination in depression and anxiety at the University of Edinburgh, told the NEW YORK TIMES. “Pay attention to situations that spike your anxiety — whether that’s getting feedback, writing important emails, being put on the spot, or starting the day with a messy desk. Keep a journal and look for patterns. When you know what makes you the most uneasy, you can better anticipate challenges and create a plan to deal with triggers.”

Habituate

Exposure therapy is the full realization of a tip mentioned earlier: testing to see if your thoughts are valid. Only rather than a mind game, it involves physically confronting your fears. If someone gets very anxious around spiders, the method would be to put them in closer and closer proximity to spiders until they learn much of their fear is unfounded. For social anxiety, it might involve something as simple as going up to 10 people and asking for the time. Such a regimen allows you to see nothing bad really happens and much of your imaginings are irrational. Habituate yourself to fear and it loses its power and control over you, notes Barker, calling such habituation the “gold standard” therapy for dealing with triggered anxieties.

Show Yourself
Some Compassion

Business coach Jerry Colonna says there are three basic risks that we’re all trying to manage: love, safety and belonging. It’s the existential fear that these needs could be threatened that is at the root of so much anxiety, he says. “I know for myself that the fear of disappointing others is a threat to my belonging. I’m not going to be in my family anymore. My children won’t love me. My partners won’t love me. I will be unsafe. I will be bereft. I’ll be alone in the woods, fending for myself …” And so goes the catastrophizing spiral. The key to dealing with such irrational thinking is self-compassion and accepting the fullness of ourselves, he argues in his book REBOOT: LEADERSHIP AND THE ART OF GROWING UP: “’I am enough and I’m doing the best that I can.’ If I can say that to myself every day in one form or another, that can be helpful.”

To help bring your mind around to such a perspective, he recommends journaling (regularly using “I am enough” as a prompt) and metta meditation, a.k.a. “loving-kindness meditation.” Yes, it sounds woo-woo, as Colonna acknowledges, but when it comes to anxiety, we are often our own our worst enemy, given the primary source of our negative thoughts is ultimately ourselves.

The post Overcome Your Anxiety With These 30 Tips appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

1. Keep the “sweet spot” covered at all times. Per jewelry sales expert and longtime INSTORE columnist Shane Decker, that’s 10 to 15 feet inside the front door, to the customer’s right. Someone always needs to be there, to greet anyone entering within five seconds.

2. Smile. People buy jewelry for happy occasions. They want to buy it from happy people.

3. Make everyone feel welcome. Every jeweler has a story about the guy in ratty overalls who dropped $15,000 on a ring — after walking out of the first store he visited, because they were snooty to him.

4. Avoid stale opening lines. “Can I help you find anything?” is just asking to be waved off, as is “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” Phrases like that make you sound like a salesperson, when you want to be an engaging person to look at jewelry with. Try an open-ended question that isn’t about business, whether it’s small talk (“How was traffic getting here?”) or a little more personal (“What are you up to today?”), as long as you ask with genuine interest.

5. Practice getting past brush-offs like “I’m just looking” by validating the customer and turning the brush-off into a question: “That’s great — please look all you want! So, what brought you in here to look?”

6. Introduce yourself. (You don’t need to ask the customer’s name until you’re further along; it can be a bit off-putting when they’ve just walked in.)

7. Ask if they’d like something to drink.

8. Offer to clean their rings while they browse.

9. Offer to throw away their trash — if they walk in carrying a cup or wrapper, or when they finish the soda you offered them. It’s a simple thing, but people appreciate being relieved of the responsibility so much.

10. Address both partners when waiting on a couple. Nobody likes feeling invisible.

11. Avoid making assumptions. “You’re so cute together!” is awkward when it turns out the bride is scoping out rings with her brother.

12. Keep your political, religious, and other potentially controversial opinions to yourself.

13. Compliment customers’ jewelry and other fashion choices. If something they’re wearing strikes you, mention it! Everyone likes to have their taste validated by a professional.

14. Master the “ask-listen-paraphrase” technique. Get information by asking your customer questions and then actively listening. Don’t be focused on what you’re going to say as soon as they stop talking. What words are they using? What feelings are they expressing? When it is your turn to speak, repeat what they said back to them to make sure you understand.

15. Let the customer do most of the talking. It’s easy for salespeople to get carried away with themselves — you want to show the customer how much you know, and talking feels like doing something. But you gain valuable insight and give clients time to think when you step back and listen.

16. Ask open-ended questions to get them talking. These usually start with “what,” “how,” or “why.”

17. Carry a notebook or tablet and take notes as you’re listening to customers.

18. Avoid asking how much they want to spend. It’s a good way to instantly rule out something they’d otherwise be willing to buy. They’ll feel guilty for going over the arbitrary number they gave you, and that puts a damper on the excitement.

19. Sit down for bridal sales. Even if bridal isn’t your store’s bread-and-butter, the “quest for the ring” is a special occasion for the couple. Always treat it as such.

20. Have champagne on hand to celebrate your bridal customers’ upcoming nuptials.

21. Show the most expensive item first. People often buy the first thing they look at.

22. Talk about emotions, not preferences or price. Less “If she likes rose gold, she’ll like this,” more “What do you think her expression will be when she opens the box?”

23. Take jewelry out of the case when talking about it.

24. Step out from behind the counter if it feels right to do so. Some clients want to maintain their personal space, but others will feel more comfortable without a barrier between you.

25. Share stories about the jewelry you’re showing. Even if it’s just a funny anecdote about the designer, stories linger in the mind and create a sense of connection.

26. Use plain language rather than jewelry jargon. Don’t assume customers don’t know the difference between a carat and a karat — but don’t assume they do, either. Standard industry terms like baguette, emerald cut, and melee can sound like Greek to non-jewelers, and leave them feeling embarrassed when they walk out. So if you say something like channel set, quickly point out what that means, and leave them feeling informed instead.

27. Say “Let’s see how it looks on you!” or “Can I see it on you?” This is the fairy godmother part of your job! It should be fun for everyone.

28. Take a picture of it on them. Then email or text it to them. Particularly if there’s a good chance they’re going to shop around elsewhere before deciding, this is a must. They’ll have a pic to remind them of the jewelry (and of you), and you’ve also deftly gotten their contact info.

29. Let them know when a piece is part of a set.

30. Return jewelry to the case before taking out another piece. Only one or (possibly) two pieces out at a time, max, if you don’t want to give your insurer apoplexy.

31. Stay with your customer. As soon as you flit off, the person who was just browsing will want you to take something out and be stuck waiting.

32. If the customer wants space, remain visible and available without hovering.

33. Practice team selling. When sales associates cooperate, you can save sales that would otherwise have been lost — and the whole store wins. Become seamless at assisting each other by bringing out stock from the safe room, turning over sales when the first associate isn’t jibing with the customer, and stepping in when your area of expertise is needed.

34. On that note, recognize when you and a customer aren’t connecting, and turn them over to a better-suited colleague without hesitation. Life is too short, and your energy is better spent on customers who mesh with your vibe.

35. When another salesperson enters the picture, introduce them right away and explain why they’re there — and then fill them in on the customer’s needs.

36. Stay out of other salespeople’s interactions with customers unless you’re invited over. Maybe you waited on them last week and want to know why they’re working with Carol today. But you and Carol can sort it out after they’re gone.

37. Refrain from complaining, gossip, or shop talk when a customer might hear you.

38. Show your customer something ridiculously expensive, just for fun. You’re not trying to sell it (although, sure, sometimes it happens) — it’s just, how often do they get to try on a $20,000 necklace? You’re creating an experience, one your customer will remember.

39. Let customers look through the loupe or microscope too.

40. Distribute a wishlist to every shopper. Even if they’re “just looking,” it’s better for them to leave a record of their favorite pieces with you — just in case.

41. Familiarize yourself with a variety of closing techniques, from the direct close (“Do it”) to the reassurance close (“She’s going to be smiling for a week when she sees this”), and figure out which ones work best for you.

42. Wait for the customer to let you know they’re done buying. It’s surprisingly easy to get so excited about closing a sale that you rush them to the checkout when they’d like to keep looking.

43. That said, take yes for an answer. When a customer has decided on something, stop showing them other options.

44. Try selling an add-on every time — they’re in the store and in the mood to buy. (Rule of thumb: An add-on shouldn’t cost more than half what the main purchase does. You don’t want to overshadow it.)

45. Stand by your prices. There are times it makes sense to negotiate or offer a discount, but cutting into your profit simply to close the sale is a dangerous precedent to set.

46. Face your bills in the same direction when making change for cash purchases. The people who care will notice if you don’t.

47. Hand out literature at the point of sale. Whether it’s an invitation to your next trunk show or trivia about the birthstone for the month, it’s one more chance to make an impression.

48. Offer to gift-wrap purchases.

49. Inquire about upcoming events the customer might need a gift for.

50. Collect email addresses and other contact info.

51. Validate parking when someone makes a purchase.

52. Walk customers out after making a sale.

53. Give them your business card.

54. Ask them to tell their friends about you.

55. Record your notes after making a sale. This is the key to building long, trusted relationships.

56. Send a thank-you note. Handwritten is still the way.

57. But for other communications and updates, feel free to text with customers who prefer that over phone calls or email — and many do.

58. Use email for receipts, order forms, approvals, and other such documentation, however.

59. Exercise discretion when you follow up. Every jeweler also has a story about the time they called to ask Mrs. Jones how she was liking her new bracelet. But Mr. Jones didn’t buy the bracelet for Mrs. Jones.

60. Proactively reach out to clients with gift suggestions ahead of birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day.

61. Whenever you place a special order, set reminders to check on its progress and keep the customer up to date on its status.

62. Install a door counter to track how many people come in every day, so you have an approximate sense of your prospects and closing rate.

63. Set up a phone charging station near the front of the store with cables for Android and Apple devices. Customers will appreciate it, and you’ve given them a reason to linger and look.

64. Post the network name and password for your wi-fi where customers can see it.

65. Do a lap with Windex and wipe down cases and mirrors whenever you have a minute, especially after a rush.

66. Replace burned-out lamps immediately. Light is your jewelry’s best friend.

67. Tidy up the restroom every time you use it, and check it hourly.

68. Keep your own food and drink off of the showroom floor.

69. Leave your phone on silent or at your workstation when you’re on the sales floor.

70. Set out disposable masks for shoppers who want them.

71. Keep crayons, paper, and candy on hand, even if kids rarely come in. When kids have a good time somewhere, they tell their parents to keep going there.

72. Along with a standard first-aid kit, have OTC pain relievers, burn ointment, and an Epi-Pen on hand for emergencies.

73. Maintain a stash of menstrual products in the restroom. If a customer does happen to need one, you’ll be a lifesaver in her book forever.

74. Check your email and voicemail at least twice a day, and respond to customers before you go home, even if it’s just to let them know you’ll get back to them with more information soon.

75. Respond to all of your online reviews — the positive and the negative — courteously and honestly.

76. Take a beat before responding to the negative reviews, and run your responses by somebody else before hitting submit.

77. Use the U.S. Postal Service’s Registered Mail when shipping something that absolutely must not get lost or stolen. UPS and FedEx are faster but less secure.

78. Take photos when taking in a repair, get clear information about what is to be done — and then repeat it back to the customer before letting them go.

79. Check all prongs and settings before returning a piece of jewelry to the customer, even if all you did was clean it.

80. Examine every repair with the customer before handing it off to them, to ensure the work has been done to their satisfaction.

81. When a customer picks up a repair, again, check to see if there’s anything coming up they might need a gift for. Don’t waste those opportunities to set up future sales.

82. Readily refer shoppers to your competitors for products and services you don’t or can’t provide. It shows that you’re knowledgeable, secure, and willing to put the customer’s needs first.

83. Reorder your fast sellers without delay. Neglecting to restock is the lamest reason to lose a sale.

84. Keep plenty of loose diamonds on hand, including large stones. Jewelers who don’t stock large stones don’t sell large stones.

85. Devote at least an hour each week to sales training, including roleplaying with other sales associates.

86. Continually broaden your product knowledge. Take online courses, research the gems you sell, and scour materials from suppliers. In a world where so much jewelry is bought and sold online, your in-person expertise is a major differentiator when customers are figuring out where to shop.

87. Set goals. Make them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) and as easy or challenging as you want. But set them, so that you have a way to track your progress and achievements as a salesperson.

88. Wear the jewelry you sell. If you don’t love wearing it, how can you persuade someone else to?

89. Sell the jewelry you wear. If someone says she wants your earrings, let her know you can make that happen.

90. Keep your nails trimmed, use lotion, and invest in regular manicures. Customers spend a nonzero amount of time looking at your hands.

91. Close the store with at least one other person. Closing alone is dangerous for you, and also for the business.

92. Double-check that the alarm is set.

93. Build relationships with other local businesses. Explore service organizations, business associations, and the chamber of commerce. The larger your network, the more opportunities you have.

94. Underpromise and overdeliver. Giving yourself a buffer builds trust with your customers, because they learn they can count on what you tell them.

95. Educate. Jewelry isn’t just shiny rocks and metals — it’s science, engineering, history, and art. Seeing it through those lenses can inspire interest (and sales) among people who rarely wear it.

96. Tell the truth. An independent small business is nothing without its reputation and integrity.

97. Communicate. When something goes wrong — and something will — let your customer know, so they can regroup accordingly. People tend to be understanding about mishaps and mistakes, even big ones. But they’re much less forgiving about attempts to cover things up.

98. Maintain your sense of perspective. You’re selling jewelry, not operating a nuclear power plant.

99. Remember that the customer’s experience is actually more important than the product. The product is part of the experience, but what will keep them coming back is how good you made them feel. This is great news, because you have a lot of control over that.

100. Read INSTORE cover to cover each month — because if there’s one thing you can definitely be sure of, it’s that there’s always more to learn about selling jewelry.

The post 100 Things Every Jewelry Salesperson Should Know appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

From brightly colored gemstone statement pieces to over-the-top craftsmanship, there were many inspiring jewels among the winners of INSTORE’S 8th annual Design Awards.

Story by Jennifer Heebner

Another year, another wildly stunning selection of winners in the 2023 edition of the INSTORE Design Awards. Vibrantly hued colored stones, whimsical silhouettes (jellyfish!), and even a masterfully made pen—yes, a pen!— caught the eyes of judges and retailers who voted on all 246 entries. That number is yet another record sum for the competition, which offers a lot of visibility and prestige.

The judging panel for the 8th INSTORE Design Awards included six high-profile retailers and three well-respected media professionals. Each voted for their favorites by way of a “blind voting” process, while many more North American merchants cast their votes at instoremag.com to generate a “Retailer’s Choice” winner in each category.

Congratulations to all the winners! We hope readers will flip through these pages to appreciate the designs, and seriously think about which lines could be stocked in stores.

Diamond Jewelry
(Under $5,000)

Diamond Jewelry
(Over $5,000)

COLORED STONE JEWELRY
(Under $5,000)

COLORED STONE JEWELRY
(Over $5,000)

Colored Diamond Jewelry

Pearl
(Under $5,000)

Pearl
(Over $5,000)

Gold Jewelry
(Under $5,000)

Gold Jewelry
(Over $5,000)

Engagement & Wedding
(Under $5,000)

Engagement & Wedding
(Over $5,000)

Platinum Jewelry

Silver Jewelry
(Under $1,000)

Silver Jewelry
(Over $1,000)

Alternative Materials

Ring
(Under $5,000)

Ring
(Over $5,000)

Necklace
(Under $5,000)

Necklace
(Over $5,000)

Bracelet
(Under $5,000)

Bracelet
(Over $5,000)

Earring
(Under $5,000)

Earring
(Over $5,000)

Men’s Jewelry

Best Price Point

Fashion/Bridge Jewelry

Best Enamel

Personalized Jewelry

Lab-Created Diamond &/or Gemstone Jewelry

Best Statement Piece

Heart Motif

Rainbow Design

Cindy Edelstein Award

COUTURE’S Choice Award for INSTORE

Grand Prize Winner

INSTORE DESIGN AWARDS 2023 JUDGES

The post The INSTORE Design Awards 2023: Made of Honor appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

Steven Singer (of the legendary “I hate Steven Singer” marketing campaign) says sticking with his idea for more than 20 years is the smartest thing he ever did. “We keep everything under that umbrella even though we are constantly tweaking it. It’s never going away. It still has staying power.”

Most advertising, he says, fails because it’s not consistent. “Most companies get rid of things that are working because the agency generates revenue by changing it. So they constantly change things that don’t need a change.”

Aucoin Hart | Metairie, LAA Great Work of Art in Every Box From Aucoin Hart

Tommy Aucoin

Aucoin Hart in Metairie, LA, had used the tagline, “A great work of art in every box from Aucoin Hart,” for years, but when it began to feel stale, they dropped it and didn’t use it for more than 10 years.

By 2018, though, after a lot of soul searching, they realized they wanted their tagline back, feeling their advertising had become too routine and sales-oriented, says third-generation owner Tommy Aucoin.

“In the merchant world, everything is about price and selection, and we were falling into that with some of our advertising,” he says. “We wanted to go back into what jewelry is. It’s emotional and meaningful.”

And the tagline that tied into “a great work of art” says a lot about who they are.

“We do a tremendous amount of manufacturing. We design in-house. We have two CAD designers and 14 jewelers on staff,” Aucoin says. In addition, New Orleans area residents are fascinated with art and design.

But if they were to bring it back, they wanted to bring it back memorably. “We wanted it to be stirring, to grab your attention, tap into your emotions and be profoundly romantic,” Aucoin says.

Aucoin Hart’s recent TV ad, which uses the French language exclusively and was shot in black and white, caused a stir in its local New Orleans-area market.

“We spent a lot of time with our ad agency [Brand Society of New Orleans] thinking about what makes us different. New Orleans is a very European city with a French heritage. We wanted to use the city as a backdrop. We also wanted to have a nod to our French heritage and be memorable, be iconic.”

Taking inspiration from French films, they opted for a cinematic approach. The agency was on board with telling a cinematic love story. But what they proposed seemed completely off the wall.

“They said, ‘We want to shoot it in black and white and we want to shoot it in French.’ I was like, ‘Wait a second, this is not going to work!’” Aucoin recalls. “My dad, who is still involved in the business, said, ‘No way!’”

The agency explained that the slogan would be in English, but that a love story could be understood in any language, and that having that language be French would be memorable, particularly with a romantic musical soundtrack.

A client focus group thought that having the commercials be a mix of French and English would make it sound more like a language lesson than a love story. So, they went with the idea of a French language commercial shot in black and white. But prior to the big Thanksgiving 2022 launch, Aucoin says, everyone was nervous.

“The first commercial we launched was a bridal commercial, because everybody can relate to it. Engagement, anniversary, Christmas, are all about love and care and emotion.

“The feedback from the beginning was that it hits a cord with everyone and pulls an emotional string; it makes them smile.”

Longtime customers said they loved it (“they called, came in and emailed to tell us”), but the commercials, reinforced by radio ads in two languages, and social media, also are now regularly pulling in new customers. “When we probe and ask, ‘What brought you in,’ referrals are always No. 1, but even if it’s a referral, a close second was, ‘We saw your commercial and we love it.’ And if it’s not a referral, it’s a commercial.”

“We now know that this is the very base of this campaign that has legs for many years,” Aucoin says.

Steven Singer Jewelers | Philadelphia, PAI Hate Steven Singer

Steven Singer

When Steven Singer first introduced his now famous “I hate Steven Singer” marketing campaign to Philadelphia, it was designed to seem like someone really was trying to destroy his reputation.

The message looked like it was scrawled by graffiti artists on the Steven Singer Jewelers storefront. Everything else from the website to voicemail appeared to have been hacked or destroyed by hostile forces. Singer had kept the plan to himself and did everything in the middle of the night, using stick-ons that looked like graffiti paint for the windows. “There were rumors I was a drug dealer or cheating on my wife, which is what I wanted,” he recalls. “Nobody knew what was going on.”

After Singer appeared on the Howard Stern radio show, which had just expanded its reach from New York to Philadelphia, it became clear the hate campaign was self-inflicted.

Since that auspicious beginning, he’s continued to make the most of “I hate Steven Singer,” proclaiming that message on banners, billboards and radio spots.

In 20 years, he’s given away at least 10,000 “I hate Steven Singer” T-shirts. Other swag includes a pencil with an eraser on both ends, post it notes that are black; golf balls that are green and bottomless coffee cups. Pre-pandemic he was famous for events, including the world’s largest bubble bath; he was also the principal sponsor for the largest indoor eating contest, which drew 24,000 people.

Singer has spoken at industry events, communication and marketing classes, small businesses and chambers of commerce around the country.

The concept and the national advertising (radio and billboards) in which he’s invested have helped his business grow exponentially. Sixty staff members work in the store and more than 100 work remotely on e-commerce. “We have a real online business,” Singer says. “We have people who do live chat with customers. We don’t farm it out or have a call center. It’s usually people who have worked in our store previously.”

The online business a decade ago was 50/50 with the store. Now online is four times the size of brick-and-mortar and continues to grow. “We’re not anywhere near any kind of a ceiling,” he says.

Steven Singer is the longest running continuous advertiser on the Howard Stern Show since Stern made the move to Philadelphia, the only advertiser who is a jeweler and the only sponsor who has appeared on the show. “I’m very lucky to be a part of that,” Singer says. “Very lucky to ride on his coattails.

For the last 20 years, retailer Steven Singer has used the “I hate Steven Singer!” tagline as an ironic and catchy message that has made him a household name in Philadelphia.

The branding idea was inspired by a customer who hadn’t bought any jewelry for his wife since he gave her an engagement ring. Twenty years later, for her 40th birthday, he purchased a diamond ring from Steven Singer and threw her a surprise party. The wife’s response to the birthday gift and party was enthusiastic, and nine months later, the couple, who had two adult children, were in the store with news of a new baby. The wife said she was very pleased with her jewelry and said “I love Steven Singer Jewelers!” The husband joked, “I hate Steven Singer! We’re up all hours with midnight feedings and diaper changes.”

And with that baby, a legendary marketing campaign was born.

Britten Wolf BVW Jewelers | Reno, NVExtraordinary, Never Ordinary

Britten Wolf

Britten Wolf of BVW Jewelers in Reno, NV, says he doesn’t want to be “the guy yelling from a bully pulpit” about racism, diversity and inclusivity, but he does emphasize as strongly as possible that everyone is welcome in his store.

“Having two gay sons, I get to see all that (discrimination) firsthand. And I’m lucky enough to be in a diverse family, where I have black step-kids.”

The first commercial he made in 2016, a 30-second spot shown in local movie theaters, emphasized that love is love no matter a couple’s gender or sexual orientation. He received overwhelmingly positive reactions to the ad, in which two young women become engaged with a traditional diamond ring from BVW Jewelers and celebrate their love and commitment with a kiss. The first weekend it appeared on social media, it generated more than 20,000 impressions on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. The day after it ran, a couple came in after seeing the video and paid for the commercial by ordering custom rings.

Reno-based BVW Jewelers’ recent commercial focuses on a black family drawn to Nevada during the Gold Rush.

“And we were considered edgy,” he says. “I don’t see it as edgy. I see it as realistic.”

He recently teamed up with Bryon Evans Films and ADJ Visions production Co. to make a commercial for regional television, with the theme of the universality of family heirlooms. The narrative focuses on a black family drawn to Nevada during the Gold Rush, who face discrimination throughout generations of their history, but pass down a cherished piece of heirloom jewelry.

“We wanted to tell a story that was based in love, while still acknowledging the past and the legacy of those that came before us,” says Darius Devine, director, co-writer, and co-producer.

“Black families have historically been excluded from the fine jewelry market, and with that means often a lack of family heirlooms,” says Wolf. “We wanted to honor the importance of family legacies and share the message that jewelry is for everyone — it’s not just about romantic love, but celebrating family love, people of all races, and love for all genders and identities. All people experience love, and we support the representation of love for all people, including those who have often been underrepresented, like people of color and LGBTQIA+ people.”

The heirloom piece shown in the video is the West African “Mpatapo” symbol or the “knot of pacification and reconciliation.” Mpatapo represents the bond or knot that binds parties in a dispute to a peaceful, harmonious reconciliation. The goals for this commercial include honoring the history of black ancestors while shifting the narrative to share new stories of hope and positivity for the future.

Koehn & Koehn Jewelers | West Bend, WIRock Your World

Andy Koehn

Andy Koehn’s “Buy Like a Guy” podcast has been a process of trial and error for Koehn & Koehn Jewelers of West Bend, WI. In the beginning, he thought promoting his podcast on social media with revealing photos of beautiful women was the way to go, but now he says he was “dead wrong.”

In fact, he’s been so dissatisfied with his original podcasts that he deleted them and started over. “So much of what I was doing at the beginning was wrong. Titles were terrible, sound quality sucked. I started on my phone and just thought this would be fun.”

But he’s upgraded the production quality, resolved those technical issues and is confident that the original idea of appealing to regular guys who are not at all comfortable in jewelry stores is a valid marketing concept. He keeps most of the podcasts to five minutes.

“I would hear the same questions over and over again from guys when they were looking for engagement rings,” he says. “They care about jewelry when they need it, and other than that, there’s not a deep interest in knowing more about it. Jewelry stores are so foreign they don’t know what to do and they get a little freaked out. The No. 1 fear is they’re going to get something that she’s not going to love.”

Koehn set out to answer these questions and clear up those concerns in the form of the podcast, which has a casual, conversational tone, as if he’s been asked by the guy sitting next to him on a barstool what he should look for in a diamond. So he doesn’t avoid “swear words” when they seem to be a natural part of the conversation, and he uses humor when appropriate.

He’s also invited guests, including a local business owner, to join him on the podcast. “The subject was ‘what you hate about jewelry stores.’ And he’s the one that put it in my brain, that ‘this is a lot of money to spend, and I want to make sure she is going to be happy.’”

Often, it’s women who find the podcast first and make sure their significant others watch it. “I have gotten sales off of the podcast,” he says. “It’s nice to see your marketing work.”

Alara Jewelry | Bozeman, MTDang, We’re Good!

Babs Noelle

In 2015, Babs Noelle of Alara Jewelry in Bozeman, MT, advertised her clearance event as a divorce liquidation sale, which, in truth, it was. She had decided to liquidate her assets to reach a divorce settlement. Exterior signage included three big yellow banners that announced: “Public Notice Divorce. Everything Goes. Up to 70 Percent Off!” Catchphrases included: “Help me wash that man right outta my hair!” and “We’re liquidating the assets and splitting the sheets!”

“It was honest,” Noelle says. “It was simple. It was transparent. People know what a divorce is, and many know what kind of financial havoc it can wreak.

“I’ve had customers bring in out-of-area visitors, and they tell the story about it, right here in the store. Usually, their comments are peppered with compliments indicating they think I’m a marketing genius. I always take the opportunity to tell them, my decision to come out and call it a Divorce Sale was actually about being transparent and authentic, because who doesn’t like their jeweler to be both of those?”

Alara Jewelry’s advertising almost always features tongue-in-cheek copy designed to highlight the store’s approachability.

Still, her most successful advertising campaign has been waged in the public restrooms of Bozeman. “All the time, I get people from restroom advertising,” she says. “The bathroom ads have continued to be an awesome source of business, and we love that we can separate the ads by men/women. The #MeToo movement has certainly meant that we’ve tiptoed away from some of our racier themes.”

She also advertises on the back cover of the local downtown directory. “Nearly every tourist to downtown Bozeman grabs one of these. It’s more cheeky than edgy, although the bragging is a bit in your face.”

Thacker’s Jewelry | Lubbock, TXA Bridal Showdown

Joe Thacker

Joe and Ann Thacker’s West Texas jewelry store is in Lubbock these days, but the heart and soul of their business is 75 miles away in dusty Roaring Springs (pop. 214), where the company was born, where its jewelry factory remains, and where Joe’s family has had a presence for 130 years.

So, it made sense to return to Roaring Springs to film an idiosyncratic commercial. In “Bridal Showdown,” brides-to-be show off the size of their Thacker engagement rings in scenes reminiscent of a Western movie. A voiceover declares Thacker’s Jewelry the finest and fairest “this side of the Mississippi.”

Thacker’s Jewelry’s “Bridal Showdown” commercial borrows on themes made famous in Wild West films.

Thacker says it perfectly reflects the vibe of the store and the history of the business.

“We have partnered with Bottom Line Marketing for a number of years, and after years of getting to know us and our area of Texas, the team at Bottom Line worked with us to come up with these commercials,” Thacker says. “The commercials were a hoot to do and have been received very well in our market. West Texas to me is still old Texas. Big cities are not Texas, in the sense of the Old Texas. My family was in business in hardware, furniture and farm supply in Roaring Springs for 80 years. It’s about that small-town friendliness.”

While Thacker’s has a jeweler on staff and a shop for general bench work at the Lubbock location, custom work (both hand carving and CAD/CAM) is done at their factory in Roaring Springs. Before going to work for Thacker’s, two of the bench jewelers were working cowboys with artistic leanings.

The Thackers offer curious clients a behind-the-scenes education.

“If you get lost and you happen to find yourself in Roaring Springs, we do give tours of the factory,” Joe says. “It’s very much off the beaten path, and you have to be going there or going to another small community to pass through it. But it’s amazing that busloads of people will go there to tour the factory, to see the gold poured, to see them setting diamonds.”

Jackie Brooks, owner of Bottom Line Marketing, says the concept for the commercial came from a visit to Roaring Springs and her own tour of the factory. “Thacker’s is not like your normal jewelry store,” she says. “We wanted to feature girls who are proud to wear their engagement rings from Thacker’s. They’re local and they wear cowboy boots, and they want a big ring. It’s who their customer is.”

Size is definitely a priority for those customers. Thacker’s sells 3- and 3.5-carat lab-grown diamonds as well as mined diamonds.

The post These 6 Retailers Took a Risk on Offbeat Ad Campaigns That Paid Off appeared first on INSTOREMAG.COM.

“It was a diamond that piqued my interest and grabbed me, a 2-carat mine-cut diamond, a darker stone,” he says. “I wondered, ‘What is this cut?
Is it real?’ I’d only seen brilliant cuts before.”

For Jordan, his father Steve, and his brother Nicholas, every day is a treasure hunt at Once Upon a Diamond in Shreveport, LA. He describes their inventory as mixed up and interesting with no apparent rhyme or reason, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. “In one case, you can see a century of styles: 1940s, late 1800s, retro, modern, mid-century, a piece made two years ago. It’s a fun way to look at jewelry.

Izzi Krombholz puts her own spin on antique and vintage jewelry with Haus of Mourning.

“That’s what grabbed my attention, the variety of it,” he says. “People started coming to see us to find that variety rather than just the contemporary, normal pieces you see everywhere. No matter how strange or unusual, there’s somebody out there for it. We are never afraid to take a chance on an interesting piece.”

Brown learned much of what he knows about estate jewelry organically, by frequenting antique jewelry trade shows, particularly in Las Vegas and Miami. “I’ll walk along an endless row of dealers and see a piece that piques my interest,” he says. “When you have a conversation with the dealers, you see they are just as interested as you are, and they can tell you all about it.”

In INSTORE’s 2022 Big Survey, only 7 percent of respondents identified “estate” as the category that most helps them stand out from their local competition.

Josh Perry of Perry’s Emporium in Wilmington, NC, a business founded on estate, says he would love to see more retailers get into the category rather than scrap everything they buy, if they buy over the counter at all. “They could make more money and a lot fewer treasures would be destroyed,” he says.

Lauren Priori, who owns four stores in the Philadelphia area and Washington, D.C., specializes in custom engagement rings. But one of her four stores is devoted exclusively to estate jewelry. “Estate is amazing for a lot of reasons,” Priori says. “A lot of stores are not comfortable buying because they’re not sure how to price things, but there is a huge competitive advantage if you are able to buy. I’d encourage people to figure out what the market value is. People need cash now and the margins can be great.

“We’ll buy anything from broken chains to huge diamonds, it runs the gamut,” she says, although most of what she’s been selling have been 1950s and 1960s era bracelets and cocktail rings with large gemstones. “We have been seeing a trend in yellow gold, but estate is so personal that it’s a little less trend driven.”

Finding a niche in antique or vintage styles can open up a whole new market segment.

Izzy Krombholz’s Haus of Mourning combines Goth fashion with Victorian jewelry to make a style statement.

Krombholz Jewelers in Cincinnati, where Izzi Krombholz works with her father, Lee Krombholz, has carried secondhand jewelry for more than 70 years, specializing these days in 1960s to 1990s vintage. “Our estate business is our No. 1 gross-profit-producing category,” Lee says. “It is a business that takes years to develop, because you must become known as a trusted buyer in your marketplace. The key is to be able to buy quality jewelry locally and then supplement it with fill-in jewelry from national dealers.”

Last year, Izzi started a secondary business called Haus of Mourning, which features Victorian jewelry, along with Goth clothing and lifestyle items. At 32, Izzi was searching for a more polished, mature version of the Goth aesthetic that didn’t make adults look like teenagers.

“I love mourning jewelry,” Izzi says. “Victorians were so sentimental. The Mourning Period happened when Queen Victoria lost her husband, and that became her embodiment in a way, an expression of mourning. Jet and onyx became super popular. The jewelry was literally dark.”

Izzi looks for gems and jewelry that have potential to be repurposed. “I love turning stick pins into ring tops or making little charms out of them. I do keep some antique pieces as-is, but other things that we wouldn’t sell as-is, I re-create.”

Whether estate clients are shopping for Victorian mourning jewelry or an Art Deco engagement ring, they want to stand out from the crowd with their jewelry choices.

“It used to be that everyone wanted to look like their neighbors, their peers,” says Beth Bernstein, author of The Modern Guide To Antique Jewellery. “That’s not true anymore. And antique jewelry is instant customization.”

Bernstein says it’s important to recognize that while estate is an all-encompassing word for the department, to be called antique jewelry, it must be at least 100 years old. The term “vintage” takes over where antique leaves off and continues to about the 1980s. “You need to know this to make sure your clients understand the difference.”

Estate has the potential to be an important profit center, and buying it over the counter can be a valuable service to offer clients. Vadim
Krivitsky of Oak Gem Fine Estate and Designer Jewelry says your clients may be offended if you tell them the same treasure you sold to them for a premium price is now worth nothing to you. “Retailers have to know how to handle their client who says, ‘I would like to sell this.’ If it’s a piece they bought from you and you charged them $30,000, how do you offer $10,000 with a straight face?”

When in doubt, ask a trusted expert, says Krivitsky. “If it’s an Art Deco bracelet, I can say it’s worth $20,000, but based on the experience of a jeweler who isn’t knowledgeable about estate jewelry, it may look to them like $3,000.”

Ross Nacht represents the fourth generation of Bernard Nacht & Co., a jewelry wholesaler based in New York City. “Everything is one of a kind,” he says. “That gives you the advantage, because if it’s here in your case today, it might not be there tomorrow.

“Find a vendor who is a trusted partner and who can provide all of the information needed about each piece, including information about its time period. That gives the sales team on the floor a bit more confidence.”

Kate Pearce is a New Hampshire-based jewelry designer and appraiser whose biggest source of profit was buying and selling estate jewelry before she retired from retail. “To be tactful, if it wasn’t anything we could use, we’d say, ‘It’s lovely but not for us.’ Or If it was a fantastic, high-end piece, but not something for our market, we’d offer to broker it for the client using our network of dealers and auction houses. A brokerage commission is assessed for this service.” She says it’s vital to confirm that the seller is the rightful owner of the items. Have an authorization/ agreement form ready for signature and verify the seller’s identity with government issued photo ID.

Although estate is not the primary focus of his business, Bill Warren, owner of Gold Mine Fine Jewelry and Gifts in Hudson, NC, has built a new customer base by hosting buying events that regularly bring in $100,000 over three-day weekends. He partners with John Angelo of All Facets Gemological Corp., whom he met on the jewelers Facebook group, Jewelers Helping Jewelers.

Warren always schedules a preview night and invites only five of his top estate clients, who enjoy the privacy and might spend $50,0000 before the event officially opens. “We live near a resort town,” Warren says. “The only way we get those people to come off the mountain and come see us is if we have an estate event.”

The estate side of his business was spawned in part because attorneys who hired him to evaluate estate jewelry often asked if he knew of anyone who would be a buyer for the jewelry. “So, I let them know that not only could I help them appraise the pieces, but I was a buyer as well. The result was a new revenue stream for the business.”

Craig Husar offers estate-buying events three times a year at Craig Husar Fine Jewelry and Designs, partnering with National Rarities of St. Louis. “There’s enormous need and incredible opportunity to buy estate jewelry from clients,” Husar says. “If you buy right, you can make nice margins on estate jewelry. It’s a differentiator that stands out.”

Krivitsky is primarily a retailer who buys jewelry at his appointment-only showrooms in New Jersey and Florida, and sells most inventory online, specializing in 1950s and newer, signed designer jewelry. Because he concentrates on brands such as Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels and Bulgari, he benefits from the millions of dollars those brands have already spent on advertising. “Maybe they saw a Tiffany Love Bracelet somewhere and they’re looking for that. It’s cut and dry. It makes their life easier and my life easier.”

THE
LEARNING
CURVE

Wholesaler Rebekah Anderson of Earth Pebbles Gemology has found her purpose in “saving” estate jewelry from being melted. “There’s depth and history and heft and story,” she says. “Jewelry shows a journey through someone’s life. Once they’re gone or they decide they don’t want it anymore, it’s cool that someone else can continue with that jewelry and add their story.

“If you’re going to source estate and vintage, you need to make sure you are purchasing items from someone who knows what they’re selling, has evaluated and graded the piece and done the math. Ask fellow jewelers who are carrying vintage and estate jewelry for referrals. Buy from trade shows. Most of the vendors have to be vetted in industry-only shows. Once you’ve found a couple of vendors you trust, ask them to educate you on the pieces that you’re buying. You don’t have to know everything, but you should know what era it is, what materials were used, and the story behind it. If you don’t know the full story, but you do know what era it came from, you can educate yourself on that era and how the jewelry was produced.”

Bernstein says it’s important to motivate your staff to learn each piece’s story and provenance. “Even if it’s not a famous maker or a signed piece, you need to know the provenance, the hallmarks, the country, the period. Certain hallmarks in England will let you know it was made in Birmingham in 1895, for example. You’re getting these pieces that have an instant story behind them. While you don’t need to personally become an encyclopedia of hallmarks, it’s a good idea to invest in books about hallmarks.”

Warren says it’s important to find the right partners to fill in any gaps in knowledge. “Even if you don’t think it fits your jewelry store operation, but you get a nice art deco piece in, there are all kinds of vendors who will buy the piece. Don’t be afraid to take a picture of a piece if a customer wants to sell it, shoot it to a dealer and just ask them.”

It’s Gretchen Schaffner’s job to sell online all of the over-the-counter buys her boss makes for Eytan’s Designs in Sherman Oaks, CA. Schaffner used to get frustrated trying to place jewelry in an exact time period until she realized she had unrealistic expectations. “We have a library full of books about vintage jewelry, and we’ve wasted a lot of time poring over them trying to find the answer on this or that bauble, and there is no definitive handbook that helps with dating jewelry that doesn’t have telltale hallmarks. We wish someone had told us early on, “Hey, put down the books, nitwit. Just narrow down a 40-year period, disclose the lack of clues, and move on!”

Eighty percent of what Julie Walton Garland of Walton’s Jewelry in Franklin, TN, sells is pre-1940s. She agrees that if you’ve done what you can reasonably do to ID the piece, it’s not doing anyone any favors to guess. “If you can’t point out a couple characteristics of the piece to back up what you’re saying, then you probably should not date it,” she says.

Josh Perry’s dad and uncles founded Perry’s Emporium by selling vintage jewelry out of the trunk of a car before opening their store in 1991.

Because they’ve built their reputation on paying more than scrap prices for pieces that can be resold, they attract 20 to 35 sellers every day.

“You never know what’s going to walk through the door,” Perry says. “A Tiffany & Co. solid gold 25-year medal for the NYPD with the original ribbon that hung on the officer’s neck came in last week.

“Buying something takes just as much skill as it does to sell something,” he says. “You have to have empathy for the customer to know what they’re going through and why they feel the need to sell this piece. And you have to be fair with them. When you are sympathetic, you will tend to overpay. Being empathetic yet reminding yourself you are in the business to make a profit is very important.”

WHAT DO
YOUR
CUSTOMERS
WANT?

Antique and vintage trends are as cyclical in popularity as other categories of jewelry, Bernstein says. “You didn’t see hoops for years, and now you’ve seen hoops for 10 years,” Bernstein says. “It’s like that in vintage, too. If you can get that formula down, you’ll be successful.”

Sometimes celebrities will spark mini-trends. Brown recently took several calls for antique diamond brooches, for example, several of which he had had in stock for a while. A quick Google search revealed that Rihanna wore three of them during her Super Bowl halftime show. “Somebody brings something back in the spotlight, and people realize how beautiful it is,” Brown says.

Bernstein says mid-20th century is trending now, especially in yellow gold, as well as the retro period, including wider bracelets. “The Georgian era, popular for so long, has taken a back seat to mid-century modern and the 1970s, such as Elsa Peretti and Bulgari. It’s more wearable.”

Krivitsky says ‘70s jewelry is hot right now among people who perhaps remember admiring the look on their parents. He also notes that Victorian rings, moveable 3D charms, and gypsy and insignia rings are sought after by younger shoppers who are converting charms to wear as pendants.
At Perry’s Emporium, slide bracelets are strong, as well as gold chains, estate watches and any kind of color: Emerald, ruby and sapphire pieces are going fast.

THE
ENGAGEMENT
RING

Priori says estate engagement rings appeal to her clients because they are unique and they are perceived as sustainable because they’re not newly mined.

Ring shoppers may believe they know which era or style appeals to them, but when they try it on, they may well change their minds, Bernstein says. “Train your salespeople not to push,” Bernstein says. “If you see it’s not really right for them, you can then find what is.”

Consider wearability, as well, Bernstein says. Anything earlier than Victorian are too fragile for the daily wear of engagement rings. Art deco in platinum is the most durable. Edwardian styles in platinum or platinum over gold without pearls are great. Sturdier Victorian styles such as five-stone or cluster rings make a wonderful choice, as well.

At Bernard Nacht, Edwardian, Victorian and art deco are always in demand among ring shoppers, but because many want yellow gold currently, Victorian and Nouveau are at the forefront, Nacht says. Also in demand are uniquely shaped stones, anything with an open culet, old mine and old European cuts.

“But I think with estate jewelry, everything will constantly be relevant and people will always be interested in it,” Nacht says. “These pieces are timeless.”

SELLING
ONLINE

When Garland began working with her dad, second-generation owner Mike Walton, in the business, he supported her ideas for expanding their omnichannel options, one reason Garland believes they are successful today. Online presence and sales have made such a dramatic difference that Walton’s has had to double their staff to keep up with the additional business.

Brown sells jewelry across five online outlets, including the store website, eBay, Etsy, Ruby Lane and Chrono24. “By offering this access to our business from multiple avenues, we’re able to take risks on more unusual pieces that may fit other locations’ tastes better,” says Brown. “We can sell pieces across the world and not just wait and hope someone from this area buys it.” Brown includes four- to eight-sentence descriptions of each piece on the website. His goal is to be honest as well as descriptive. Detailed photographs don’t lie and Brown won’t either; he will always mention a crack or a patina. “I’m happy to repair it or polish it, but if you like it the way it is, I’ll leave it alone.”

DISPLAY
IDEAS

Craig Husar had a visit from display expert Larry Johnson, who noted that estate jewelry was displayed at his Wisconsin store like everything else. “Larry said, ‘You’re missing an opportunity to tell the story about how this is unique.’” Husar asked a staff member who collects vintage books, perfume bottles and other trinkets if he could borrow pieces from her collection. When he used the props to display estate jewelry, it suddenly came to life. “Customers know immediately that it’s unique,” Husar says, “and sales have escalated because of that. It grabs people’s attention.”

Croghan’s Jewelers in Charleston, SC, has a section of the store dedicated to antique and estate jewelry, which is hugely popular with millennials and visitors to the city, says owner Mariana Ramsay Hayes. “People walk in here and see this antique and estate jewelry and get caught up in the aura of where they are, of wanting to buy a Charleston antique, and then they walk into the other side and see beautiful diamond and designer collections.” Often their customers find creative ways to mix the two, creating stacks of rings drawn from both areas.

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