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this man knows more about beer than you do about jewellery
Research shows that students working part-time in off-licences often know more about the beers and wine they are selling than retail staff working in the average jewellers know about the gems and other products they are selling.
It’s more than students just liking a drink!
You’ve got to wonder why this is so. You might suppose that the students working in off-licences already know a lot about the drinks they are selling because it’s well known that students can be very passionate about drinking. Joking aside, students working in off-licences are hardly going to be experienced sommeliers so there must be something else at play here.
They want to give their customers confidence.
The average consumer is still very intimidated when it comes to choosing a bottle of wine. If they cannot speak to someone who is knowledgeable about the different kinds of wine and their qualities at the point of sale, the chances are that they will go looking for better service at a different off-licence the next time they want a good bottle of wine. No doubt, off-licences rely on the repeat business to provide a steady flow of customers, especially in these economically straitened times, so if a customer doesn’t come back because of lack of product knowledge, it could spell the kiss of death for an off-licence.
Realising this, perhaps wine sellers go the extra distance to ensure that their staff is well versed in the tastes and needs of their local market. They understand the questions and concerns of their customers. They find out the ‘story’ behind the wine, the vineyard and the people who make it. Most likely they subscribe to monthly wine magazines to give them insight into trends that might open the door to new entrepreneurial opportunities. In turn, they communicate all of this to their staff so that they can convey this knowledge to the customer.
You might argue that learning about wine is a much easier prospect than learning about gemstones. Tasting wine is a big part of learning what makes a good wine so if bottles of wine are readily available in an off-licence, all you have to do is crack a bottle open and get tasting. But it’s worth bearing in mind that selling wine and selling gems have a lot in common, not least the word ‘clarity’.
Passion, commitment, salesmanship
If you want customers to value you, you need to value your customers. That might sound like an obvious thing to say but it’s surprising how many jewellery retailers ignore this basic tenet of business. How do you build value for customers, with its implicit assumptions of trust and quality of service? Surrounding yourself with the best people is key.
Hiring staff with the right background and experience is a good place to start but even more than that, making sure that your staff is well trained and motivated goes a long way towards helping to ensure that your business keeps making money. How do you motivate staff? By ensuring that your staff is passionate about the products it is selling.
Where do you find passion?
Passion comes from knowledge so there is a direct correlation between motivation and product knowledge, which in turn can impact on commitment to the business. A well-trained employee is therefore more likely to be confident about the sales process. If staff is more confident about the sales process then it is more likely to be effective in bringing extra revenues into the business.
What is a well-trained employee in a jewellery store?
Just like a good employee in an off-license, a well-trained employee in a jewellery store will know the proper way to handle, store and care for the products they are selling. They will know the differences between natural, treated and synthetic gemstones in the same way a well-trained student working in an off-license knows that champagne-style wines made outside the region of Champagne cannot be called champagne. They will have to master the language of gemstones and jewellery, the differences between different types of metals, stones and manufacturing techniques.
Where can you get this training?
In the alcohol business, it is up to the supplier to educate and to some extent motivate retail sales staff to understand and sell their product. There is no reason this can’t be rolled out by jewellery manufacturers and stone dealers who supply you. This should be part of service you receive and expect. We all expect our customers to part with serious money when it comes to making a purchase, the least we can do is give them the knowledge and confidence they need to make a sound purchase.
Ultimately, your staff are only as good as the effort you are willing to put into ensuring they are well-trained. Ignore that at your peril. In this fraught economy, people are reluctant to spend money on jewellery so will hunt for the best possible deals that they can get, or will buy with the retailer they have the most confidence in, even if the price is higher. Make sure that it’s you they turn to for value and confidence when making that purchase.
With Christmas behind us and the future plans being prepared, some of you are probably considering your approach.
Did you find yourself selling from your existing collections or did you find yourself increasingly being asked for customised or bespoke jewellery pieces?
With a slight shift in luxury and consumer’s approach to buying it, is there an expectation by our customers for bespoke pieces?
How do you fill your shelves if all you sell is bespoke jewellery?
As a jewellery retailer or designer jewellery maker, when you consider how you fill your retail space, there are 2 approaches that immediately present themselves. You either establish a collection of jewellery – whether it is designed and made by you or bought in, or you can offer a bespoke service. It is clear, that most jewellers fall somewhere between the two. Offering an established jewellery collection – i.e. ready to buy ‘off the shelf’ jewellery, gives many advantages. The most obvious being to take advantage of the impulse buyer. Not everyone wants to wait for your moment of inspiration to have that one off creation, nor does the man who forgot his wife’s birthday and who needs something NOW!. But every so often and that might be more often than not, you get someone in who wants something DIFFERENT, or wants to be INVOLVED in the jewellery design process, they like that one, but have you got it with some VARIATION or another? So you end up taking on a lot of commissions and doing more bespoke work and your jewellery collection starts to collect dust on the shelf and you begin to wonder ‘why did I bother making that stuff, it never sells’. If you didn’t, how would people know what you did? How would they be able to get you to make something different if you didn’t make anything at all and only offered a bespoke jewellery service?
The Catch 22
So it appears a catch 22 has evolved. What your established jewellery collection does, is set the tone of the shop, your work and your style. The style of collection, the gemstones used, the quality and the manner in which they are displayed, will very much send out a signal of what your jewellery business and you are capable of. What YOU need to do is make sure that everything goes towards highlighting your talents and maximising your profits. Now I could go on about how the secret to profits are in making your jewellery more than just the sum of its parts, but I’ll save that for another occasion.
Do customers have the right to expect bespoke?
One thing I have noticed, and it’s really the big brand name jewellers (as well as the high street chains) that are, for many reasons, only able to sell rigid collections and they do ok. In fact, only if you’re a super important customer, and I’m talking exclusively about the higher end right now, will they even contemplate the idea of creating bespoke jewellery. Set that against the designer maker.
The benefits of bespoke.
Most designer makers I know would be only too please to work hand in hand with their customers to create a customised jewellery piece for them. Think about it, not only do you have a very happy customer, but you have an evangelist who will be so proud of the jewellery they were involved in the making with you, they will spread the word far and wide.
Opportunities knocking
As you build your relationship with your customers, you build further opportunities to sell. It could be that through working with them on a particular piece, you find out that there is a follow up occasion being celebrated, offering another opportunity to build on their new jewellery collection might keep them coming back for more.
It may be this process that sets you apart from other jewellers in your area, who may not be willing, or indeed able to offer a bespoke/customising service. It is exactly this type of service that sets jewellery artisans and designer makers apart from the run-of-the-mill jeweller, or the big corporations that would rather not get involved in any activity of this nature. I understand why they wouldn’t, or in fact can’t.
By customising, tailoring, or creating one off pieces of jewellery for your customers, you have an opportunity to build a relationship that few other businesses have.
Take it and run with it.
Your collection may establish you, your bespoke jewellery service will build a special relationship with your customer.
Recently, the weather in Europe has been quite cold. For many, the cold weather is bad news; however, if you have a small business, the cold just may work to your advantage. If you are able to open your shop, log on to your website or otherwise come in to work, the benefits are yours for the taking.
Increase customer loyalty.
First, if you are able to get out and about in the bad weather, then chances are that many of your customers are also able to get out on the road as well. This means that you have the advantage of increasing customer loyalty by being available when your customers need you the most. In addition, you may also attract new customers who are not able to make it to their usual shops.
Cold weather is a good ice breaker.
You may want to use the time to meet new contacts. It is amazingly easy to bond with your customers and associates when the weather is bad. Conversations and relationships have come to life for many years with the phrase, “How about that weather?” Your customers and business associates will appreciate your effort to maintain business as usual even when the weather is working against you.
Open your doors to new business.
When the weather is cold customers often have more time to spend in your shop, especially if other businesses have not made the same effort to keep their shops open. Take advantage of this and attract more customers by offering a free warm beverage such as coffee, tea, hot chocolate or even mulled wine. If you’re a supplier, your customers and prospects may have more time for you. Understand they may not be in the buying mood, but may at least open the door to you and offer you a warm drink and a chance to get to know you and your product better while you try to learn their needs.
Opportunity knocks.
For retailers, you may find that people come in to stay warm and if other shops are closed, may look harder to buy something you have. If you customers have little time to shop for the gift they’ve come out for, they will be more open to your jewellery because they need to make a purchase and you’ve made them feel at home. Take time to build their profile, spend more time learning about their needs throughout the year and find ways to better prepare them for their next purchase.
Get the little things done.
If you do not have customers coming in on colder days, you can still benefit. You can take advantage of the lull by taking care of some overdue jobs that require your attention. When business is booming, or even just happening, it is difficult to deal with the smaller, yet just as important tasks. Slower business when the weather is bad provides you with an opportunity to get back on top of the little things.
Let your website pick up the slack.
If you have an online store, firstly make sure your products are up to date and looking irresistible. Secondly let your customers know delivery expectations in real time. If it looks like their product will be delayed, send them some sort of gift voucher or presentation online that can be given on the day while the gift/product actually arrives.
The extreme weather has been extremely inconvenient to millions of people in the UK and further afield over the past few weeks. However, many finance experts and investors might argue that cold weather can be beneficial. When all is said and done, many believe that there will be just as many winners as there are losers when the financial effects of the winter weather are weighed. It is up to you to make sure you’re one of the winners, but you have to take action!
Do you ever find yourself in a buying situation where you are looking for some good advice on something but you feel better qualified than the person you are talking to? Think about it. You went to buy a TV and a sales assistant comes along, you ask them for information on a product and they say confidently “sure I know about this” and they then proceed to read you information off of the box of the product or the big labels they put on the display model. You stand there and think to yourself – what does this guy take me for?
Now take this situation one level up and instead of buying, you are supplying.
Your the supplier of a product and your being told by your customer that they have been asked for a product that either doesn’t exist, can’t be found easily, or won’t look right. But instead of the person you work with realizing that and telling their customer straight away, they let their customer go away thinking that anything can be done. You can see where this is heading.
I recently had the opportunity to work with someone who when it came to the crunch, didn’t give the impression that they were comfortable with the job they were doing. They’d just taken up a post in a big jewellery firm having come from a relatively small one and found themselves in at the deep end. They turned to me in search of a set of stones that was needed for an existing jewellery piece and I did pretty well considering the range of sizes and shapes. But they had issues with depths of some of the stones and colours, even though once set, these issues would have largely been overcome. Because they were hung up on the absolute sizes (we’d told the customer it could be done), these stones had to match weights of the original set (an impossibility as they were tring to swap sapphires for emerald) they were not able to fulfill their order, a customer probably didn’t get the service they were looking for and they probably lost a client.
What frustrated me about this was that it didn’t need to turn out that way.
The right person, with the right qualifications, in the right place, could have managed a better outcome.
So what should they have done? Well with a bit more understanding of the stones would have been a good start. An understanding that you can put together a range of stones and that minor variotations may occur, but they’ll be evened out once set. If it was a problem handed to them by an over eager salesperson then a word with that person to clarify issues with the customer might have tightened the communitation loupe and given the customer more confidence in the buying process. If some experience was missing, then turn to the nearest expert to work out the solution and pass that on that solution to your customer.
if your staff know their product, they can achieve many goals.
They will be more confident in the sales process.
They will bring their customers round to a more realistic outcome.
They will get business done and make more money for the business.
If they don’t know the product, you’re letting money walk out the door.
I was lucky enough to get to the second week of the Goldmiths’ Fair in London last week and again I was blown away by the quality, diversity and creativity on display there.
It really got me thinking about our industry and how predictable it has become on one side and how innovative it is on the other. With my office based in London’s Hatton Garden, I often feel quite uninspired about the trade. Shop after shop selling real crap, with the exception of a few. The opportunity to turn this into a ‘Premier’ jewellery shopping area is repidly slipping away. Imagine a world where all the shops on Hatton Garden were like a big version of Goldsmiths’ Fair. Every shop run by the jeweller creating wonderful pieces, silversmiths getting the recognition they deserve for the work they do and skill they do it with. It would be mind blowing. It would compete with Bond Street and would be a beacon for creativity, craftsmanship and skill of the kind that the UK was once known for all round the world.
Is it a dream, of course it is. I’ll tell you why, because you need passion and drive and care and attention to detail and a million other characteristics that are missing from the trade as a whole, but still burn brightly in pockets of the industry. The creative mostly hide out in small workshops dotted around the country, known only by those who seek originality. Even those who only buy at the high luxury end of the market are not buying jewellery that is made with as much passion, originality and creativity as was demonstrated at the this years show.
As an insutry, these are the people we need to celebrate, support and showcase! I would like to congratulate all those who took part in the show, wish them the best of luck and speaking for myself at least, tell you that it gives me pride to know and work with some of you.
I went to week one of goldsmiths’ fair with a very fresh perspective. With everything that’s been going on with the economy and the impact it has had on luxury and jewelley, I now see events like goldsmiths’ along with their exhibitors as representing the future of the industry.
When you first walk in to the hall you get struck by a sense of history. The fact that they still have uniformed commissionaires sets the tone of the whole event. Very formal and grand, well on the outside anyway. Those very grand surroundings of the hall are quickly put into sharp contrast by the very contemporary designs on show.
Firstly there is the silversmithing. If you are not familiar with the kind of work they show there, forget the stuffy dated image of candlesticks and goblets and feast your eyes on the craftsmanship on show. Designers like Jenny Edge, Ndidi Ekubia and Heather O’Connor, have taken this ancient craft and moved it right into the 21st century. Their pieces incorporate materials such as silver, wood and glass to truly amazing effect.
Then there are the Jewellers. There are the regulars such as Eric Smith, Paul Spurgeon, Mikala Djorup, Liz Tyler, Shaun Lean and David Marshall to name but a few. And there are the newcomers such as Maria Militsi and Jenny Deans, who collectively could teach the Bond Street set a thing or two. In fact they could teach the whole industry a thing or two as the principles that guide them – creativity, commitment, care for all materials used, skill in putting it all together and passion about their craft really shine through in the final product. It’s a shame more of industry doesn’t operate in this way.
It is definitely a must if you can get there. I’m looking forward to week two.
http://www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk/exhibitions-promotions/goldsmiths’-fair/
I recently read an interesting discussion thread on LinkedIn (which I recommend you join by the way) in which people were answering the simple question: What is branding?
It was interesting to see the range of answers. They touched on the issues around price, design and availability. Others seemed to think it was generated from the customers rather than the organisation. Some seemed to suggest that it was a much more emotional connection with people’s heart. Some talk about adding value to your product and how it differentiates you from your competitors. Others see it as something that will you will pay you a premium for, while other questioned why you’d ever want to do it with something cheap (I guess Asda, Wall Mart, Tesco et al have also missed the point).
Lots of people seemed to write about what brands do and don’t do, but most people failed to answer the question ‘what is branding?’
Now I’m not saying I’m a master marketer or brander, I’m not the brand evangelist and I am not the last word in defining all things conceptual. What I do know is that I didn’t get a clear understanding of what people thought branding actually was.
Ok the easy part is to pick apart other people’s thoughts and definitions. Time to state my position: Put simply, branding is the identity you give your organisation and the voice you use to communicate with your customers.
From this everything else comes: Price, position, marketing channels, logo, usp you name it, sometime your product. Once you have your identity and your voice then you bring your product into alignment.
In the luxury field, perception is everything and everything is perception. The brand should stem from the core of who you are (your identity), transcend everything you do (your inner voice) and represent you in the way you want to be seen (your outer voice). Think about your identity (inner and outer) and ask yourself what am I trying to say and what are my customers (inner and outer) hearing. Somewhere in between the 2 are your brand values. Once you’ve defined them align your products, sales strategy and marketing message to this and you’re on your way to fulfilling your brands potential.
Please let me know where you stand on the subject and post your thoughts.
The family jeweller is being attacked by the internet. – Nonsense!
I once heard someone say if it’s raining, don’t complain, go out and buy an umbrella!’
In most cases the internet has been the scapegoat for a business that just lacks vision and passion. If it wasn’t this, then it would have been something else. What the internet has done is present opportunities and made people think about how they can move their businesses forward. When they haven’t been able to come up with the answer, that’s when they panic and the business goes into free fall.
Really it couldn’t be simpler to get customers though the door, even during difficult times, but it takes effort, patience, some planning and a little courage.
Sometimes you need to take an idea and bring it into a new age. In the past, the out of town/country jeweller was the cornerstone of the high street, today faceless, tasteless multiples rule, and many ‘family’ jewellers have stayed firmly in the dark ages. What they need to remember is that more and more, people want to buy from people they trust, and can develop relationships with. So now you have to work out how you start developing that relationship?
Don’t start selling to them the minute they walk through the door and don’t be disingenuous either.
Find a reason to get them through the door and have a strategy in hand to build a long term relationship. Start with an open evening. People love to be invited out for a drink. You can host an evening in the shop and team up with other local suppliers to provide other elements that will go to make up the evening. Use a local restaurant to provide the food and drink. Guests can be offered a discount if they eat there that week. Team up with a local ladies fashion boutique to invite their clientele. They can bring some mannequins in to show off the latest collections or even put on a fashion show, where the models would also ware your jewellery
Be Relevant!
Take this opportunity to bring in featured designers so they can talk about their collections and educating both your customers and your sales staff. This can be done more regularly than the just on special evenings.
Make sure you take full advantage of the evening and collect as much data as possible about your clients and follow up with them in a timely way. Collect email addresses, birthdays, anniversaries and any other relevant details. Then show your customers how to best take advantages of services you offer.
Have a relevant website. Your customers will use your website to see things they may not have time to come in and view properly. Give them every opportunity online to see your stock and maybe even buy it too.
Spring is the perfect excuse to launch an event like this. You need to show old and new customers that you are more RELEVANT now than ever before.
I think the family jeweller has many years to run before the internet takes a piece of this action..
With the recession still biting, people shopping for anything ‘luxury’ want to rely more and more on one person for one thing. They want a specialist, an expert they can call on for advice on that topic or help with a purchase.
The opposite of that would be the person who shops for price and uses the internet find a product at the cheapest price. Read more
Recently I got in to a debate about LVMH taking Tony Balir on its board to help its business especially in India. http://bit.ly/6CRqHD
To me that spelt a departure of the true spirit of what luxury should be. My argument was as follows, if Mr Blair’s alignment with LVMH was to make the brand (of both of them) greater. To me, it had the opposite effect I would argue that it’s not gravitas that makes luxury respectable, it is understatement and scarcity that are essential.
In fact I would go so far as to say that Tony Blair working for (not representing – he is being paid after all) LVMH, is everything that is wrong with luxury and politics for that matter. Sure LVMH has got amazing brands, brands that once upon a time defined luxury, but the over consumption of all things opulent came to a head an end in 2009 and with it a new definition of luxury was borne.
LVMH should not be looking for economies of scale, moving production away from France to the 4 corners of the globe. LVMH should be a breeding ground for individuality and master craftsmanship, creativity and of scarcity. It should not be the General Motors of apparel (I’m sure they thought they were in the luxury business too on some level) . This is not luxury this is just flashy – the opposite of luxury.
Let me know your thoughts
