Customer Service (214)
One of the biggest news stories in the world last week – the U.S. aside — was the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of the Manchester United soccer team.
A swimming pool installer in Virginia found himself in a bind after the crash in 2008: No one was buying pools, his company’s income stream dried up (sorry, couldn’t help myself), and he needed to cut expenses. So, he looked at the $250,000 a year he was spending on traditional marketing and turned to the Internet ... to begin answering questions.
My third and final installment recapping the “Strategies for Advertising Designer Jewelry” panel from The SMART Show will cover advice shared by Michael Finn of E.B. Horn (Boston, MA), one of our “Eight-Figure Independents” in INDESIGN’s Mar/Apr lead story. E.B. Horn has been in business since 1839 – six years before my home state of Texas joined the Union. Nevertheless, the store’s marketing practices are anything but “old school.” Here was some of the advice Michael shared:
It’s show season again and the converging of thousands of people from all parts of the industry, and often all parts of the world, in Chicago or Vegas or Atlanta, leads me to my usual conclusion at this time of the year: We are an attractive bunch of people. Whether it’s designers, vendors’ reps, store owners, in-store associates, whoever ... (OK, perhaps not the media so much), my belief is that if personal appearance could be quantified and jewelry-industry professionals were compared with say the participants at a cement and aggregates trade show, “we” would fare pretty well.
