Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Other Promotions: Some jewelers have been very successful with special parties. A party could honor a visiting jewelry designer, or it could exhibit a special collection of unusual jewelry. The personal touch in the invitations is highly successful here; so is the relaxed and festive atmosphere of the party itself.

Direct mail, telephone and personal contacts are all useful and successful ways of inviting people into your store. One very effective form of personal contact is speaking engagements, if you have a flair for talking in public; as a diamond expert, you would be welcome on a great many club programs in your community.

Don’t forget publicity. Cultivate the editors of your community papers and the commentators on your TV and radio stations. Show them new and exiting diamond pieces and they will talk about them.

No one ever won a war by taking potshots at the enemy, and no one ever won a market with sporadic and disassociated promotions. Consistent and continuous planned programs for promoting your store and diamonds do get results, do bring traffic into your store. For example, stage an annual Diamond Week, in which your advertising, windows and interior displays focus attention on the gem.

From this point on, it will be up to those who actually sell the diamonds to take advantage of the opportunities for sales created by your promotion efforts.

Selling At The Counter
You have studied your market and have stocked merchandise for those to whom you wish to cater. You have established your image, done your promotions, and attracted traffic into your store.

Now comes the payoff—selling at the counter.

Every diamond purchase is highly important to the purchaser, whether it be a quarter-carat or a five carat engagement ring, a gold pin with a single 10-point diamond, or a necklace with dozens of carats.

Therefore, every diamond customer must be treated individually. No matter what your store image—even pressure cooker—your diamond sales will be easier, surer, if you give the customer more individual treatment than you give customers for other merchandise.

There are three principal appeals on which the best diamond salesmen draw, sometimes only one to a sale, sometimes a combination of all three:

- Romance—a diamond is a gift of love and a diamond is forever.
- Information—a diamond is for real.
- Fashion—a diamond is for now.

These are more than appeals. Actually, each contributes to the background and the framework for the selling situation, whether the purchase is a diamond engagement ring or a diamond gift.

Selling With Romance
No two diamonds in the world are exactly alike. They are as individual as fingerprints. They are as unique as the love each man feels for his beloved, and she for him.

Diamonds are a miracle of nature, just as love is. The hardest of all minerals, they will endure forever. Unique in their structure, like little prisms, they will reflect all that is put into them, just as love will.

It is no wonder, then, that this jewel of such beauty and such meaning is the symbol of the single most important emotion known to man.

When a young couple in love enter your store in quest of the symbol of love, they are enjoying a very special emotional experience. Try to remember what it is like. Help them to find the very diamond that will capture and hold these moments for them forever.

You are a part of their adventure. So there’s no place in this scene for an insensitive salesman. You have to understand love, and in-love-ness. No one expects you to be gooey about it. Just have the empathy to take pleasure with the couple in search of their diamond. Be a happy jeweler.

A diamond room is part of selling with romance. There’s a certain togetherness when you and the couple are alone with the diamonds under consideration, away from the rest of the store. If your security arrangements permit your leaving them completely alone for the moment of final decision, so much the better.

Granted, price tags are not very romantic. But times have changed. It used to be a sign of consideration for his fiancée if the young man came to the store first to discuss the price range he could afford for an engagement ring. A general selection of stones was made in the acceptable price range and the boy would then bring in his fiancée for the final selection. But there is a growing trend in the other direction. An intense feeling of togetherness among young people today tends to make it unnecessary for the young man to shield his fiancée from the reality of price. Some young couples are vitally interested in price while others lean more toward style. Style is usually a better starting point, of course. Once you resolve the style you can easily determine the proper price range without upsetting the aura of romance.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Why The Future Keeps Catching Us Out

Richard Watson explains why innovations succeed/fail + other viewpoints @ http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/innovation/watson/future-catching-out-092507.html

Masters Of Design

Fast Company profiles the new superstars of design 2007 + newcomers @ http://www.fastcompany.com/design

Useful links:
Yves Behar
Bob Greenberg
Sam Lucente
Paola Antonelli
Philippe Starck

Smell Test

Joan Raymond writes about the science of smell + other viewpoints @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20836711/site/newsweek/

Beatlemania

(via The Guardian) The Rolling Stone interview Audio: John Lennon speaks to Jann S Wenner in this historic interview, released as a series of podcasts.

The Great Pretender: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155883,00.html
Official Beatlemania: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155884,00.html
Paradise Lost. Reality regained: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155885,00.html

I thoroughly enjoyed the articles. They are unique reflections of people who knew John Lennon's character.

Lock, Stock And Chinoiserie

The Economist profiles Fortnum & Mason + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9854799

Chinese Photography: Beyond Stereotypes

Barbara Pollack writes about China's new generation of artists + photography, a recent development in China’s relatively young contemporary art history + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1485

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Budget For Communication: A great many media of communication are available to jewelers for communicating with their markets and promoting store traffic. Some are relatively inexpensive, except for thought and ingenuity. Some are relatively expensive and require the help of experts in the field.

Some jewelers spend as little as 2 percent of their annual gross sales on advertising and promotion. Others spend as much as 7 percent. The average seems to run about 5 percent.

This is for general and continuing promotion. When some jewelers want to try for an additional and new market, they estimate their possible sales and then set aside an extra 5 percent, or more, of that figure, as the budget for the special promotion.

Windows
Virtually every jeweler has a window, and this is your least expensive medium of communication because it is built in. It tells your story to the passerby, and it can be a highly effective medium for promoting store traffic.

There is no general rule about windows, except that they should be consistent with the image that you are presenting. Some jewelers get excellent results with highly dramatic windows in which only a few jewels are featured. Others load their windows with merchandise, and they get excellent results too.

But windows should be changed regularly. If you present the same merchandise, or even the same type of merchandise, in the same way, week after week, you tend to create an impression that you aren’t very imaginative.

Advertising
In some communities, the most effective medium is a daily newspaper. In others, weekly newspapers are more effective than the dailies.

A woman’s TV program can be an effective medium, and so can a TV news program. In some communities, a ‘People Speak’ type of radio program that lasts for two or three hours at night can be highly effective. Young people usually listen to disc jockey programs, whatever the time of the day.

One jeweler gets his best results from advertising in the movie theater down the street from his store. Another maintains that the outdoor theater is the only place for him to advertise.

In college communities, some jewelers get good results with complimentary ads in the campus publications. Others get even better results with selling ads.

When selecting media for advertising, you should ask three important questions. Do they fit within my budget? Do they reach the markets I am trying to reach? Does my use of them build traffic for my store? If you can afford an advertising agency to help you answer these questions, so much the better.

Whatever advertising media you choose, make sure that your windows and counter displays follow the same theme. When advertising attracts customers, windows and counters should keep reminding them of that attraction.

Selling Diamonds (continued)