Blogging From The JCK Show: Small Jewelry Stores Face Big Challenges
In a troubled economic time, it's quite fascinating to attend a show aimed at helping people sell jewelry, a non-essential item that might be the first thing axed out of the budget when times get tough. It does appear that many owners of jewelry stores are worried. Small independent stores, similarly to small bookstores, have been fighting a difficult battle for years, facing competition from a variety of angles including jewelry store chains, discount retailers, and the internet. At the JCK Show in Las Vegas held at the Venetian Hotel, I sat in on a couple of marketing sessions aimed at jewelers to learn how they will be selling to their customers now that they need their business perhaps more than they ever have before.
Once concern seems to be how to attract younger people. The majority of jewelry store owners appear to be in the Baby Boomer demographic and they don't always know how to connect with younger generations. Have you ever walked into a jewelry store and felt like they weren't speaking your language when it comes to selling to you? NIck Failla, of Premier Consulting Innovations suggests that part of the problem might be that they may have been selling to you as if you were your parents. At the JCK Show he spoke to jewelers explaining that the generation gap is more than just a question of age but a question of values. The issues he spoke on reminded me of similar themes discussed at the Luxury Summit back in April. Selling luxury goods to the younger consumer involves more than just a glossy ad featuring a popular celebrity. Failla brought up the successes of lifestyle brands like Cadillac and Apple; it's his assertion that "people don't buy brands, they join brands" they want to be part of what the brand represents. He also made a very important point that for Generations X and Y humor sells a lot. Until he mentioned it I hadn't really considered it but this is very true. Jewelry stores use many different types of advertising pitches but most of them focus on selection, price and luxury. What they don't stress is fun, they show you how luxurious a piece is rather than how good it would make you feel. This is something I've noticed overall in the luxury market, but I suspect it is starting to shift with the changing tastes of today's consumer. Just strolling out of the Venetian Hotel, I saw a billboard for Barney's New York touting that they offer "Taste. Luxury. Humor."
The rise of Blue Nile and the popularity of Amazon and other online retailers in the online business does have some jewelers concerned. How does the small family jeweler defend themselves against the threats of big box retailers in the jewelry business like Costco and against online giants like internet phenom Blue Nile? Failla said that whenever he talks to people who might buy their jewelry as gifts for others at Costco they will lie and say the got it somewhere else. The family jeweler is selling trust but they are also selling pride. Shane Decker from Ex-Sell-Ense also makes another key point, the internet can't upsell, it can't show you a beautiful stone you weren't looking for. It shows you what you ask for (which is one of the reasons it is so popular, especially with younger people who have an innate dislike of being overtly sold to). Both Nick Failla and Shane Decker tell jewelers to trot out the big stuff to all their clients. In the past, salespeople often made an evaluative judgement of how much a person could afford and then rolled out the goods according to their perceptions. These days the guy in jeans and a t-shirt is just as likely to spend big as the guy who comes in wearing a suit (personally I'd love to see a jewelry store where the salespeople dressed casually but perhaps that's just me).
Jewelry salespeople probably dread the phrase "just looking" more than anyone else. It's an immediate shut down. The way Nick Failla suggests working around this is asking people what they are looking for, what the giver wants the piece to say, and who the recipient is. His perception seems to be that the main purchaser of jewelry is still a man buying for a woman whether it's his girlfriend, wife, daughter or mother. I believe that the younger generations, especially the live-for-today Generation Y crowd is doing a lot more buying for themselves (both men and women) but that they are not doing a lot of their buying from traditional jewelry stores. However, people are still going to a local jewelry store for the bigger pieces for the reason mentioned above, trust. And there are less people coming in to stores than ever so every person who comes in really counts. While the phrase "viral marketing" still seems to be foreign to most small stores they are learning to go beyond the traditional postcard mailings, using the internet and holding special events such as art exhibits or classes, things that go beyond just a sale, to get consumers in the door. Failla tells jewelry stores that they need a website and that it needs to be colorful, lavish and easy to use. He mentioned a fact that I also heard mentioned at the Luxury Summit back in April which is that most purchases these days have an internet component. The sale might not be made online but the consumer has done research, visited a website, maybe even read about the product on a blog or two before ever entering a store.
One big sign of the economic crunch? Nearly everyone is in the gold buying business. With the price of gold steadily rising, jewelers who might have disdained buying gold a few years back for fear it might turn of their customers and make them seem downmarket are now finding that buying gold is one of the things that keeps them in business. Nick Failla suggested explaining to customers that selling and especially trading in their old jewelry is a form of recycling, a glamourous way to go green.
Will the independent smaller jewelry store become a thing of the past? I hope not. For me, growing up, the "family jeweler" (ours was Mr. Schaeffer) was the person we turned to whether the clasp on a necklace was lose or whether it was time to buy something nice for Mother's Day. Today with so many distractions, it's challenging for a jewelry store to have that kind of relationship with their clients but both Shane Decker and NIck Failla stress that this is the way jewelers will survive, combining new technologies with the old-fashioned idea of customer service.
Jewelry salespeople probably dread the phrase "just looking" more than anyone else. It's an immediate shut down. The way Nick Failla suggests working around this is asking people what they are looking for, what the giver wants the piece to say, and who the recipient is. His perception seems to be that the main purchaser of jewelry is still a man buying for a woman whether it's his girlfriend, wife, daughter or mother. I believe that the younger generations, especially the live-for-today Generation Y crowd is doing a lot more buying for themselves (both men and women) but that they are not doing a lot of their buying from traditional jewelry stores. However, people are still going to a local jewelry store for the bigger pieces for the reason mentioned above, trust. And there are less people coming in to stores than ever so every person who comes in really counts. While the phrase "viral marketing" still seems to be foreign to most small stores they are learning to go beyond the traditional postcard mailings, using the internet and holding special events such as art exhibits or classes, things that go beyond just a sale, to get consumers in the door. Failla tells jewelry stores that they need a website and that it needs to be colorful, lavish and easy to use. He mentioned a fact that I also heard mentioned at the Luxury Summit back in April which is that most purchases these days have an internet component. The sale might not be made online but the consumer has done research, visited a website, maybe even read about the product on a blog or two before ever entering a store.
One big sign of the economic crunch? Nearly everyone is in the gold buying business. With the price of gold steadily rising, jewelers who might have disdained buying gold a few years back for fear it might turn of their customers and make them seem downmarket are now finding that buying gold is one of the things that keeps them in business. Nick Failla suggested explaining to customers that selling and especially trading in their old jewelry is a form of recycling, a glamourous way to go green.
Will the independent smaller jewelry store become a thing of the past? I hope not. For me, growing up, the "family jeweler" (ours was Mr. Schaeffer) was the person we turned to whether the clasp on a necklace was lose or whether it was time to buy something nice for Mother's Day. Today with so many distractions, it's challenging for a jewelry store to have that kind of relationship with their clients but both Shane Decker and NIck Failla stress that this is the way jewelers will survive, combining new technologies with the old-fashioned idea of customer service.
