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This year’s Pi day will be a once-in-a-century event: Come mid-morning, our clocks and calendars will strike the first 10 digits of Pi: 3/14/15; 9:26:53. True, that’s probably only going to excite math geeks, so a better strategy might be to follow the lead of Japanese jeweler Brilliance, which a few years ago marketed 0.314 TCW diamond jewelry as gifts under a campaign called “Propose with Pi.” It noted that Pi is infinite, irrational and cannot be divided — like everlasting love.

This article originally appeared in the February 2015 edition of INSTORE.

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Procrastination Day is promoted by the National Procrastinators Club to highlight the “many benefits of putting off until tomorrow that which needn’t be done today.” We’d suggest its organizers postpone the day indefinitely. The biggest problem with procrastination is that you can’t enjoy today. American writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer noted, “Our greatest weariness comes from work undone.” Got something you don’t want to do? We’d suggest targeting just 20 percent of the job and leaving the rest. It’s amazing what a little momentum will then do. To paraphrase Nike, just start.

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One of the few American ideas the old Soviet Union picked up and improved upon, or at least supersized, was international WOmen’s Day. Call a meeting of the store politburo and think of ways to honor and celebrate your hardworking sisters (highlight your favorite female designers, especially overseas artisans as a nod to the international aspect of the date, with a no-buying, gals-only event.)

12 Want to start building a pipeline of future customers? Ahead of Girl Scout Day, get in touch with your local troop and offer to sponsor a Jewelry Badge. At Artful Eye Jewelry Design Center in Prescott, AZ, the store’s goldsmith gives the budding jewelry lovers a tour of the workshop and helps each one make a sterling silver twisted wire ring to take home. Hey, get prepared!

14 The FBI rolled out its “10 Most Wanted List” on this day in 1950. To mark the 65th anniversary of the date, send a 10 Most Wanted Wish List for your female customers to fill out ahead of Mom’s Day. Vow to hunt down and alert the men in their lives.

17 Shake those limbs, suck up the oxygen, we’re leaving nothing in the locker room. Yes, March Madness, aka the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships, starts today and for retailers the date’s become one of surprisingly rich potential. Jill Hornik of Jae’s Jewelers, Coral Gables, FL, held a March Madness event last year in which all the inventory in the showroom (OK, take back that line about leaving nothing in the vault) was available at a 50 percent off. “We marketed the event by sending an e-blast to our customers, posting on social media, putting up two digital billboards with messages that changed throughout the sale, running a couple of print ads in community newspapers, and utilizing the local BID office for additional marketing support,” she recounted. The cost was less than $10,000 yet generated $108,000 in revenue, said Hornik, who recommends such dramatic sales only once every few years.

26 Think there are already too many national days to remember? The sponsors of Make Up Your Own Holiday Day don’t agree, and neither does retail analyst Ken Gassman. “Jewelers need to do everything possible to smooth their business across the year, rather than relying mostly on the Christmas season,” he says. Any idea, any theme, any hook will do. “You can have a sale like ‘The Manager’s Away, So We’re Nearly Giving Jewelry Away! Come in now, before he returns,’” he says.

S T O R E    A N N I V E R S A R I E S

15 Years: Godwin Jewelers

Bainbridge, GA

Godwin Jewelers started small — really small — in an 8-by-10-foot space where Monroe Godwin opened a watch-servicing business with his wife, Mary Anne, in 1960. The local railway brought in a stream of customers (railwaymen needed working watches), and before long the business was on the move, first to a space around the corner, then to the city’s main square, followed by time in a new mall and finally, in 2000, to its own free-standing building, a 7,300-squre-foot space that had previously been a bank. Size has its benefits, second-generation owner Ronnie Godwin told INSTORE a few years ago. “To sell you a 3-carat diamond you have to have a 4-carat diamond to let them know you’re seriously in the business.”

B I R T H S T O N E S

Aquamarine

The name of this beautiful, light blue stone evokes images of calm, clear seawater gently lapping against a Mediterranean shore. No surprise then that it was long thought to have a soothing influence on married couples, and it is rightly the recommended gift for the 19th anniversary. Legend says it is the treasure of mermaids, and that aquamarine earrings will bring love and affection to the wearer … and if not, at least admiring glances.