RAPAPORT…
The 4Cs are not the only things that make a piece of diamond
jewelry a sales winner. In an ongoing series, Rapaport Magazine explores the
“3Ws” — what’s selling, what’s not and why — by going straight to the people
who really know — jewelry retailers. Each month, we ask a sampling of retailers
to comment on the important issues that are facing the industry today. Here is
what they had to say when asked in early September: “What are your holiday marketing
plans and are they different from what you did last year?”
LUCY ZIMMERMAN, OWNER
ROMAN JEWELERS
FLEMINGTON, NEW JERSEY
“We usually start our holiday marketing right after
Thanksgiving. We are doing something new this year. It’s going to be a unique
three-dimensional direct mail. We’ll also do email blasts. And we’ll do trunk
shows with our top vendors.”
FRED WEBER, OWNER
WEBER JEWELERS
DAYTON, OHIO
“We are anticipating a good season. We are doing something a
little bit different, a communication thrust rather than a media thrust. Two
months ago, we started a modest series of multiple-media efforts to create
consistency in letting the public know we’re in business and what different
products and services we deliver. We used to just concentrate on either radio
or TV or newspaper, but now we’re dividing our dollars among a variety of
communication vehicles — social networking, billboards, radio, TV, newspapers
and direct mail. We’re finding that our business has picked up already and we
are moving ahead with that concept, which will take us into the Christmas
season.
“We have an older clientele and newspapers and television
seem to be the strongest vehicles for communicating with older audiences. But
we also wanted to continue to feed our pipeline, because, with older clientele,
your pipeline empties faster than it fills. By getting into other media, we’re
hitting a lot more people. We’re not going out and saying we’re running a sale
or an event or promotion. What we’re talking about is where we are, who we are
and what services we supply. We do mention brands, like Mikimoto, Pandora,
Lazare diamonds. It’s a different concept than what we’ve traditionally done
but we’re getting more bang from our bucks.”
JEFF HAMRA, OWNER
HAMRA JEWELERS
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
“This year, we plan on investing in radio advertising. In
terms of special events, we have two events planned — one watch and one
jewelry. We’ll start advertising in October, as usual. We’re not planning
anything too different for this year.”
MAX BARTIKOWSKY, PRESIDENT,
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (CEO)
BARTIKOWSKY JEWELERS
WILKES-BARRE, PENNSYLVANIA
“The way the economy is, we have to do more advertising and
try to do some promotions around the holidays. It’s been pretty quiet. The only
thing we’re doing a lot of is buying gold. “We have a trunk show scheduled for
November. It’s an annual event where we bring in some vendors and different
departments have sales. And we started a webpage and we’re putting a lot of our
merchandise on the internet. So if people go online, they can see some of our
merchandise and, like QVC or the Home Shopping Network, they can buy right off
the internet.”
CHARLES LASKER, OWNER
LASKER JEWELERS
EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN
“We’re not doing what we’ve done for the past two years, which
was a snow promotion — ‘if it snows five inches, your purchase is free.’
We’re not doing that this year because we feel it works
better if you don’t do it every year.
“For the first time, we’re going after business on the day
after Thanksgiving. We’re giving away an iPod on purchases of over $2,500 made
on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of that weekend. That’s new for us, to go after
that day. Short of that, we’ll use our normal channels…we’re pretty heavy in
radio and we’ll increase that. We do email blasts but not special pricing. We
probably will send to our list of regular customers a gift card type of thing.
We’re looking for a good Christmas; I think it will be a good season.”
LISA TIDWELL HALLIBURTON, CO-OWNER
BELL JEWELERS
MURFREESBORO, TENNESSEE
“We’re doing what we’ve done in the past — cable, newspaper,
Facebook, email blasts. As for special events, we do an antiques show and a
ladies’ night. We do marketing all
year round; we don’t wait for any particular time. But in terms of holiday
events, we’ve already started wrapping Christmas presents, so I guess you could
say we’ve started, but probably we’ll begin doing ‘holiday’ in November.”
PAUL EMERSON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
EMERSON & FARRAR
REDLANDS, CALIFORNIA
“I’ve been sitting here and thinking about that. We had a
great first quarter and then a huge slump. Usually we have some cash from
bridal sales and this year, even that went away. I haven’t sorted it out yet.
We do social networking and email. We generally do a catalog but it’s getting late to do
that this year and that probably won’t happen. We have special events planned —
trunk shows.”
CAROLYN POPE, OWNER
CREWS FINE JEWELRY
GRANDVIEW, MISSOURI
“We’ll probably continue to do what we’ve done in the past.
I’m not pulling back in any way on that aspect. We do direct marketing and we
usually do a watch brochure and then we advertise in a local HerLife magazine,
which is four-color and well read by our demographics. That’s pretty much where
we’re at with it.
“In terms of special events, I’m not sure yet. We do have
our 40th anniversary coming up, so I haven’t totally made any decisions along
those lines yet.”
PATRICK ELEBASH, OWNER
ELEBASH’S JEWELERS
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
“I haven’t even thought about it yet. We do special events,
we do billboards, we do TV, we do email, we do social media — a little bit of
everything. As of now, that’s what
we’re going with.”
