BY EILEEN MCCLELLAND
Published in the June 2013 issue.
Perry’s Fine, Antique & Estate Jewelry
Charlotte, NC
When Hadley Perry Pacheco joined her dad, Ernest Perry, in his jewelry store in December 2010, it was a pivotal time in the 35-year-old business. Pacheco, who says her parents never pushed her into the business they founded before she was born, worked as an attorney in Boston before returning home.
The partnership could not have come at a better time for Ernest, who had been contemplating big changes. Pacheco, as VP and general counsel at Perry’s, launched a bridal campaign, increased the company’s involvement with regional charities, and brought her father’s long-time vision to fruition by launching and designing a new store location. She also manages Perry’s national TV shows.
“Our main focus has been and still is antique and estate jewelry.” That means 60 to 100 people every day visit the store to sell jewelry or gold or coins. The company re-sells what it can in the store, as well as via the TV show and eBay.
For much of its existence Perry’s was located in a popular mall even though it was a destination business that didn’t require mall traffic. “When we first moved there 25 years ago it gave us a lot of exposure to customers but over the years we outgrew that whole concept,” Perry says.
“When Hadley came aboard I challenged her and she challenged me to put a new focus on our bridal business and it’s really been paying off for us,” he says. “But we didn’t have the room to market ourselves as a bridal store in the mall.”
So, they moved across the street and expanded into the first floor of an office building. Now their business is divided into separate areas; one side for buying and the other for selling. “The whole idea in the new showroom was to be able to have a lot more intimate contact with our customers, especially bridal customers,” Perry says.
Dad and daughter brainstormed with their ad team to promote both the new focus on bridal and the big move across the street and received a National Gold MarCom Award for the resulting marketing campaign.
BRAND COMPONENTS
BRIDAL ADS AND WISH LIST
They’ve run ads in Carolina Bride and The Knot’s North Carolina edition for the first time.
“Because we’re mostly an antique and estate business, you’re not going to find things here you find in other stores.” Because their competitors focus on bridal brands, Perry’s emphasizes the unique and the antique rather than try to compete directly with the same brands. “The message is, “come check us out because you’re going to see things here that you’re not going to see anywhere else.” They’ve also added a house brand for basic semi-mounts.
RING IN THE RAIN The response to the Ring in the Rain promotion has been terrific, Perry says.
PACKAGING AND BUSINESS CARDS“We wanted to totally reinvent ourselves,” Perry says. “Even our business card is totally different from a traditional business card. It’s square rather than rectangular. And our packaging is totally different. We contracted with an Italian firm and I had to close my eyes when I paid the bill. But it sets us totally apart.”
THE TAGLINE “We want everyone to have a wow experience, whether coming in to sell, buy or have something repaired,” Pacheco says. “‘Wow, what a find!’ has been our tagline on all our print advertising. We also implemented wow cards, pre-stamped for customers to make comments. We enter them all into a drawing and both a customer and the associate who helped the customer wins a $100 gift certificate to a steakhouse.”
MOVING ADS “We had been associated with the same location and hadn’t done a lot of changes with our image in a while,” Pacheco says. “We are able to do things differently in this location: take out multiple pieces, offer beverages, etc. We changed our business concept, updated our color scheme and our marketing plan. It was all intertwined.”
THE MOVE: BILLBOARDS AND DIRECT MAIL“The mission for our campaign was to ensure that everyone in the Charlotte area knew we were moving and to get them excited about what we were doing. We focused on direct mail, which we hadn’t done much with before, and billboards.
PERRY’S HOLIDAY BILLBOARDS “We ran 12 billboards for the grand opening, and every single day people were saying ‘We love your billboard.’ We got a tremendous response from that, so we did one for Christmas as well in a high visibility location,” Perry says.
THE CELEBRATIONThey had a weeklong celebration in 2012, beginning with a preview for employees and their families. On Wednesday, they invited vendors and anyone who had worked on the project — architect and contractors — as well as the Charlotte media, which helped promote the store. Then, on Thursday night, they invited about 200 top customers to the catered grand opening bash. “It was an action-packed week,” Pacheco says.”
TV COMMERCIALS Perry’s has come up with texting-style TV commercials without any sound. All you hear is beeping back and forth between a couple on two smart phones. The modern take on the TV commercial was the result of a quarterly brainstorming session with Spark Publications and Don Jeffries, who handles video creative.
NEW WEBSITE They hired a full time employee with a journalism degree to handle social media duties and tend to the recently re-launched website, www.perrysjewelry.com
DIRECT MAIL For Perry’s big annual sale in June, they decided to advertise only through direct mail and were overwhelmed with the response from that.
COLOR SCHEME ON ANY AD
Perry’s colors were updated from dark green and gold to lighter green and a platinum color.