Archive for the ‘Fashion Jewellery’ Category

Jewellery shop

The SHOP at SHOWstudio launches Headdress, an exhibition featuring work by Jordan Askill, Stephen Jones, Charlie Le Mindu, Nasir Mazhar, and Noki.

Examining the modern sculptural presence of this time-honored trend, the SHOP brings together a variety of theatrical headgear by five contemporary milliners. Perfectly balanced between art object and functional accessory, each piece in the show serves to demonstrate just how extensively this trend is being reinvented. Where Mazhar and Askill create gigantic, rigid sculptures rooted in art historical precedent, Le Mindu and Noki weave soft materials together to create shocking height and stature. Anchored against Jones’ quixotic but painstakingly crafted headpieces, the range of works in headdress afford the SHOP’s audience intimate access to the iconic objects of this season’s newest fascination.

In tandem and to compliment the headdress exhibition SHOWstudio will be broadcasting performances from the LIVEstudio in Bruton Place.

The overachievers: America’s Best Jewelers 2009

Optimism is harder to appear by these days, as even stalwarts such as Tiffany and Co. and Sterling Jewelers abide to watch double-digit slides in their sales.

But the retailers who rose to the top in National Jeweler’s 2009 America’s Best Jewelers (ABJ) Benchmarking Analysis are affidavit absolute that accepting absolute may help. In fact, a part of the a lot of assisting jewelers responding to the survey, 64 percent accepted sales to acceleration this year, with 40 percent anticipating boosts of 1 percent to 10 percent.

The brilliant expectations didn’t appear easy–not this year. Overall, ABJ analysis respondents appear a boilerplate bead in sales of 0.7 percent amid 2008 and 2007, and boilerplate affairs fell from a boilerplate $450 in 2005, to $425 in 2008. Still, some food accept been faring bigger than others at befitting sales able during this downturn.

High-profit firms, authentic in the analysis as those firms that rank in the top 50 percent of all companies according to arrangement of balance afore absorption and taxes (EBIT) to absolute assets, saw sales acceleration 3.7 percent. Low-profit firms, those in the basal bisected of the EBIT-to-assets bracket, saw sales abatement 12.6 percent.

So, what’s the aberration amid the habits of the big earners and the basal dwellers? National Jeweler talked to a few of the food appointed as America’s Best Jewelers to acquisition out.

While the winners action a advanced ambit of access for retailers to aces and accept from, backstab champ Susan Eisen of Susan Eisen Fine Adornment and Watches in El Paso, Texas, offers a simple business philosophy: Acquisition out who and what you are, and be that.

For Eisen, an El Paso built-in who majored in art metals in academy and considers herself as abundant an artisan as a business person, this agency active a abundance with an absorbed arcade space, accepting accessible to the abstraction of crafting pieces from abnormal and not-so-fine abstracts such as chestnut and turquoise, and not spending every day staring at and annoyed over her store’s financials.

The absolute key, she says, is for retailers to amount out what works for them. For Eisen, that agency breaking out of the cast of “typical jeweler” and not accepting abashed about aggravating new tactics.

“I’m not afraid,” Eisen says. “Artists yield risks.”

Getting personal, accepting flexible

One breadth that requires an adept approach, abnormally lately, is affairs design jewelry–at atomic aloft bridal.

When asked to almanac sales in 14 altered artefact categories, precious stones came out on top a part of survey-takers, acquisitive up 39.5 percent of sales volume, including design adornment (28.2 percent) and apart precious stones (11.3 percent). Colored rock adornment was next, advantageous 7.8 percent of the boilerplate sales volume, followed by appraisals at 7.1 percent and karat gold adornment at 6.8 percent.

Those called in the analysis as high-profit accept allegedly begin a way to advertise added diamonds, admitting contempo challenges.

High-profit food accomplished a 6.8 percent boilerplate access in loose-diamond sales amid 2007 and 2008, compared with a boilerplate abatement of 5.3 percent for low-profit firms.

Diamond adornment sales added a boilerplate of 0.8 percent for high-profit firms, while low-profit firms saw them blooper 14.6 percent.

ABJ champ Tyler Klima of Tyler’s Gold and Precious stones in Manchester, Iowa, attributes his design adornment sales access in 2008 to added advertising.

“I got actual advancing in my marketing,” says Klima, who wrote radio spots for his abundance in which he reveals claimed details–such as the actuality that he’s the youngest of three boys–but avoids crowing about auction items, or calling out specific product.

“I anticipate that’s fabricated a lot of difference,” Klima says. “People wish to accessory with the alone they’re traveling to do business with. It makes me added human, added claimed in their eyes.”

Though radio equaled big business for Klima, he’s an aberration a part of top scorers. Alone 38.9 percent of high-profit firms appear putting radio commercials on the air, compared with 62.9 percent of low-profit firms.

The a lot of accepted forms of business a part of all food were absolute mail, acclimated by 71.8 percent of all stores, followed by non-partner in-store events, acclimated by 60.5 percent, and anniversary ads, active by 55.6 percent of all stores.

Also absorbing is that while Klima avoids discussing promotions while he’s on the air, 55.6 percent of high-profit firms use business to advance specials and sales, compared with just 31.4 percent of low-profit firms.

Emerson Robbins, an ABJ champ who operates E.E. Robbins food in Seattle, Tacoma and Bellevue, Wash., has acquainted into amount issues by adjusting his design sales to clothing today’s frugal consumer.

While Robbins acclimated to abstain precious stones beneath SI1 clarity, he is now blame SI2 appurtenances with aplomb, award new cuts, such as the Passion Cut diamond, that bigger adumbrate inclusions.

These stones still attending acceptable but don’t backpack the ample amount tag that can appear with a college accuracy rating.

“To the eye, they’re still admirable stones,” Robbins says. “They just don’t absolutely as high. I feel the industry has absolutely done itself a disservice by affairs based on certificates rather than on the alone adorableness of the diamond.”

A third-generation jeweler, Robbins was one of the co-founders of Robbins Bros., alongside brother Steve, but eventually autonomous to annex out on his own.

Today, Robbins says he still considers his operation a ancestors business, just like 89.4 percent of analysis respondents.

One acceptable turn

In accession to accepting a adroitness for affairs stones, high-profit firms managed to about-face account added bound than their low-profit counterparts, advertisement a about-face of 1.2 against 1.0.

The boilerplate age of account for high-profit firms is 12 months compared with 18 months for low-profit firms, and high-profit firms say 10 percent of their account is added than three years old, while 16 percent of low-profit firms say the same.

Both high-profit and low-profit food appear abiding 3 percent of account to vendors but, if they do advertise adamant merchandise, high-profit firms do so after affairs out, affairs alone 1 percent of commodity at beneath than bazaar value, compared with low-profit firms, which unloaded 3 percent of commodity at bargain prices, the analysis found.

At Duncan and Boyd Jewelers in Amarillo, Texas, ABJ champ Ronald Boyd advocates application a acceptable account administration arrangement to admonition about-face commodity over faster. He uses ARMS software with the training provided by Focus Management.

“You charge to be on some array of account administration arrangement that works with you, gives you those letters and appearance you [what's turning],” Boyd says.

Another aphorism to reside by: A few acceptable vendors are bigger than a continued account of characterless ones. That aphorism is key to active Boyd’s No. 1 action for accepting rid of age-old inventory, which is trading it back.

“You accept to accept a accord with your vendors,” he says. “You don’t charge 100 vendors. You charge 10 acceptable ones.”

A agents that stays together

Finding superior staffers, befitting them and training them is an affair that perplexes retailers, whether they accept been accessible for beneath than 10 years or added than 40.

“Finding the appropriate cadre and accepting them accomplished is allegedly the hardest assignment of all,” says Mark Clodius, who owns nine-year-old Clodius and Co. Jewelers in Rockford, Ill., with his wife, Monika.

Not surprisingly, high-profit firms accept a bigger handle on animal resources, analysis after-effects show.

The boilerplate anniversary activity about-face amount for all food surveyed was 12 percent, but high-profit firms’ about-face amount was 11.2 percent, while low-profit firms came in at 21.4 percent.

At Phil Jewelers in Anderson, S.C., buyer Phil Silverstein hasn’t absent an agent in three years. In anecdotic his compound for captivation his blessed agents ancestors of six full-time advisers calm for so long, he sounds a bit like Dr. Phil giving admonition for a blessed marriage.

“We account anniversary other,” Silverstein says. “We plan things out. We ask anniversary added questions–nobody knows all the answers. We get forth every day.”

Another abstruse to befitting staffers blessed is to advance the wealth, a tactic that is allegedly acclaimed to high-profit firms, which pay staffers a hardly college alternate allowance in every class analyzed in the survey, except advice technology.

For example, the boilerplate alternate allowance for managers at high-profit firms is $25.50, compared with $24 at low-profit firms. For salespeople, the aberration is added dramatic, with high-profit firms paying $18 an hour to low-profit firms’ $13.10.

“We go able-bodied aloft the [salary] barometer for this area,” Silverstein says. “If we didn’t, we wouldn’t accept them. Humans are consistently absent to bigger themselves financially, and we’re a footfall advanced of that.”

High-profit firms aswell assume to accord advisers a bit added abandon to accomplish absolute decisions. A absolute of 42.9 percent of high-profit firms let staffers accomplish appraisement decisions after a supervisor’s OK, against 27.3 percent of low-profit firms.

Learn to sell

Both high-profit and low-profit firms abode agnate levels of accent on agent training.

A absolute of 44.5 percent of all food surveyed appear dedicating 21 or added hours a year per agent to training full-time employees, including 48.6 percent of high-profit firms and 47.1 percent of low-profit firms.

High-profits firms, however, seemed to abode a greater accent on befitting training in-house.

A absolute of 94.1 percent of these firms ranked company-run, in-store training as actual important, compared with alone 79.4 percent of low-profit firms.

Low-profit firms seemed to adopt off-site alien training, ranked as actual important by 50 percent of these stores, against alone 41.2 percent of high-profit firms.

Mark Clodius uses a alloy of both styles, administering twice-a-week affairs in his abundance and bringing in alfresco experts, such as Harry Friedman of The Friedman Group.

Clodius says Friedman teaches the administration to do statistical breakdowns account employees’ sales weaknesses so that they can plan on them.

“You don’t absolutely anticipate about it [when you're a salesperson],” Clodius says. “You go out on the sales attic and try to admonition people. But if you’re thinking, ‘My bang-up tells me I should alpha affairs added big-ticket merchandise,’ again you’re added acceptable to appearance added big-ticket merchandise.”

How they operate

Here’s a attending at the basic statistics of America’s Best Jewelers analysis respondents.

41.5 percent are a Sub-S Corporation

89.4 percent accede themselves a ancestors business

69.1 percent hire their facilities

79.8 percent accomplish just one store

30.6 percent run their alone store, or their best store, in a city location

44.6 percent address absolute anniversary sales of $1.5 million-plus

39.5 percent of what these food advertise is apart precious stones or design jewelry

Source: The 2009 America’s Best Jewelers Summary Data Report, Advantage Business Information, National Jeweler

About this survey

The 2009 America’s Best Jewelers (ABJ) Benchmarking Analysis was produced by Advantage Business Advice for National Jeweler.

The analysis is in its additional year and is advised to analyze best practices aural the industry. It was conducted online amid April and June and, for the aboriginal time, was done in affiliation with addition industry benchmarking survey, Jewelers of America’s (JA) anniversary “Cost of Doing Business Survey.”

A absolute of 687 respondents abounding out the JA analysis while the ABJ analysis garnered 124 complete responses.