JCK - Memo to Merchandisers

Why Leadership Is Important for Jewelry Retailers

2012-04-23 00:00

Leadership is necessary for every manager in the jewelry industry. Today’s 21st-century managers are required to develop their own processes in order to influence their employees to accomplish stated goals and to direct the organization in more cohesive and coherent manners. Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Jewelry leaders carry out these processes by applying their leadership knowledge, talents, and skills.Let’s take a...

10 Tips for Selling Collectible Jewelry

2012-04-16 10:41

Any item can be perceived as collectible. Many jewelry customers will review their jewelry wardrobe and say that they keep certain pieces of jewelry because they feel each piece is part of their jewelry collection. What additional pieces might a sales associate offer to help entice shoppers to consider purchasing a collectible piece of jewelry? What special story comes along with the collectible piece of jewelry? Every piece of jewelry on display should be presented with a story and made to be...

How to Probe Shoppers to Understand Their Expectations

2012-04-09 09:49

When selling, jewelry sales associates must consider the desired total customer benefit package perceived by each shopper and present a bundled offering that addresses the economic, functional, and psychological jewelry benefits desired uniquely by each shopper. What makes this very challenging is that many customers really do not know what they want to purchase—and often can tell jewelers only what they don’t want. This challenges sales associates to do an outstanding job of probing shoppers...

12 Tips for Earning Media Mentions

2012-04-02 09:49

Has your company gained favorable publicity through promotional efforts other than paid advertising? Earned media reflects publicity gained through editorial influence. This is different from social media, which relies on word of mouth publicity. Earned media is non-paid promotion, and it has proven to be very effective because the content can be positioned in ways that paid advertising cannot.Retail jewelry stores can cultivate earned media through any mass media such as television, radio,...

How Jewelers Can Manage Customer Expectations

2012-03-26 10:48

The best definition of marketing I have run across is “that space in the customer’s mind that the company desires to occupy.” In the customer’s mind, there are some expectations of service level, shopping experience, store ambiance, product quality, price/value, etc., that all equate to an individually perceived value proposition. Shopper beliefs are formed from perceptions and must be influenced positively through every interaction with the brand.Too often retail jewelry stores are dealing...

Customer Loyalty Tied to Customer Experiences and Engaged Employees

2012-03-19 11:06

Regardless of the condition of the economy, people always need to buy things. Many still need accessories like jewelry to complement their work or casual attire. What the recession has changed is the deliberate way in which consumers now spend their money. Not only are customers paying close attention to what they are spending their money on; they are more carefully evaluating how much value they get for each dollar spent and in the process are becoming more aware of the value derived in the...

6 Tips to Deal With Psychological Noise

2012-03-13 12:00

Psychological noise affects communications by impairing reception of the message. It is an internal noise that impacts effective communication by affecting the mental ability to interpret the message.Psychological noises affect consumer behavior; for instance, if consumers face difficulty in interpretation of advertisement messages, their behavior will be highly affected towards the jewelry product or service. Therefore, marketers must be sure to remove all possible causes of psychological...

8 Ways to Promote More Effective Differentiation

2012-03-05 13:00

As fragile as it may be, there’s a retail recovery underway as consumers gain more financial confidence. Now that the economy is stabilizing, there’s a fight for consumer dollars. More effective differentiation is a key strategy for all jewelry stores to focus on at this time. Differentiation is much more than just being different. Effective differentiation translates to greater sales, as customers choose your jewelry company over the competition. Here are eight questions to ask yourself about...

How Jewelers Can Increase Sales By Enticing Customers With New Categories

2012-02-29 13:00

Generating new sales through existing customers can often be the most available sales tool and just makes good business sense. A very promising approach to finding new sales is to expand the number of categories that each customer purchases. For example, some men may have purchased jewelry for Valentine’s Day, but never purchased wedding or anniversary jewelry from your store. Keeping an up-to-date and detailed customer profile that includes historic sales by product category is something that...

7 Tips to More Effective Content Marketing

2012-02-21 12:17

All jewelry marketers should be practicing content marketing. Content marketing is about creating and distributing relevant information that is valuable to targeted jewelry customers. It places greater emphasis on the art of marketing communications rather than on transaction exchange. Here are seven tips to help you craft your content:Content marketing is non-intrusive. Traditional media is very intrusive. DVDs are often set to pre-record programs so consumers can bypass advertisements. We are...

3 Stages of Jewelry Customer Loyalty

Tim Malone — 2012-02-13 11:26

Customer loyalty is defined as a deeply held commitment to repurchase or repartronize a preferred product or service in the future despite competitive efforts to encourage the customer to switch vendors. The key to customer loyalty is the intent to repeat purchase. Here are three very important stages of customer loyalty:Some loyal customers are still available for a superior value proposition. These customers are still interested in receiving a superior value proposition from competitors....

How Participating in the Jewelry Industry Can Lead to Happiness

Tim Malone — 2012-02-06 13:00

What makes the jewelry industry so dynamic and rewarding is the ability to help others find happiness through the beauty of jewelry, and the resulting happiness found through serving customers.Here are six examples of how participating in the jewelry industry leads to happiness:There is a hedonistic approach to happiness that states the sole good in life is happiness. Aristotle approached happiness as the meaning and purpose of life. The jewelry industry offers all who are involved the pleasure...

How Jewelers Can Be Leaders With Passion

Tim Malone — 2012-01-30 11:31

Jewelry owners and managers and employees clearly all have a passion for jewelry or they probably would be working in a different industry. Here are seven tips to a more fulfilling and rewarding approach to leading your business, employees, and customers.Have a vision that guides you when establishing policies and procedures. Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop said, “People I work with are open to leadership that has a vision, but this vision has to be communicated clearly and persuasively...

6 Ways to Improve Vacation Jewelry Sales

Tim Malone — 2012-01-23 13:00

Many vacation travelers purchase new outfits before going on vacation, but the same can't be said of vacation jewelry, which is often bought at stores located in the destination. From my research, this is a cost that is not identified in a traveler's analysis of what it costs to vacation. How many of your customers vacation and plan to shop for jewelry or will make impromptu jewelry purchases while on vacation? How many sales are you missing by not marketing pre-vacation jewelry to your...

7 Ways to Better Manage Customer Expectations

Tim Malone — 2012-01-17 13:00

Customer expectations must be managed. Jewelry managers must not assume that customers have the same expectations. To effectively manage customer expectations, follow these seven steps.1. All customers expect solid information. Make sure each sales associate is well versed in each product category and offering. Information must be relevant and it must relate to the interests of the individual shopper. Don’t talk down to shoppers with fancy GG terms. Use language that the shopper can relate to.2...

6 Ways to Improve Sales by Educating Jewelry Customers

Tim Malone — 2012-01-09 11:29

Jewelry customers expect to be informed and educated. What is the difference? We are all bombarded daily with lots of points of information. The information we do not find valuable we call clutter and filter out. We try our best to retain interesting and valuable information. The key point about information is that it does not necessarily motivate us to change our behavior. However, a proper education can bring about a change in behavior (because it has the capacity to change our beliefs,...

14 Tips for Jewelry Merchandisers

Tim Malone — 2012-01-04 13:16

Merchandising management has never been more important to the success of a retail jewelry store than it is today. Consequently, measurable performance results are now equally important for all jewelry merchandising managers. Jewelry companies depend on merchandising managers to source items that prove to be in high demand and do not require heavy discounting before they can be sold. Jewelry merchandising managers need to execute programs utilizing speed, agility and flexibility by giving...

7 Tips for Improving Customer Relationships

Tim Malone — 2011-12-15 14:13

In today’s 21st century marketplace jewelry companies only have two sources of competitive advantage: They can learn more about their customers than their competitors and they can turn that customer knowledge into perceived superior value propositions before the competition.The real battle in today’s jewelry market is in creating individual customer strategies. The most valuable assets in any jewelry company are not the inventory, but rather its customers. When jewelry companies cannot be sold...

How to Reengage Customers Online

Tim Malone — 2011-12-08 17:03

For jewelers who depend on selling online as well as those trying to build more store foot traffic, it is important to engage more customers by placing relevant advertisements on sites they frequent. In the simplest terms, find the sites where customers are hanging out online and improve the reach of your advertising messages.Here's another way to put it: The great hockey star Wayne Gretzky was asked what made him so successful. His response was “I skate to where the puck is going to be.”...

Coco Chanel on Fashion and Elegance

Tim Malone — 2011-12-04 23:17

I find quotations from famous people fascinating. I equally like to read quotations from people I think are fascinating. Here are my favorite quotes addressing fashion and elegance from a woman who was very famous and offers a fascinating legacy . . . Coco Chanel.“Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.”“Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has...