New JEMS Institute Provides 1st Ever, Single Source, Sales, Management, Marketing Resource for Independent Retail Jewelers

(PRESS RELEASE) SALT LAKE CITY – For the first time, Jewelers can now get all of their management challenges addressed in one place and for a ridiculously low price.

JEMS (Jewelers Excellence Management Solutions) Institute brings together educational resources, sales training, marketing expertise, turnkey marketing programs, digital and traditional media production, buying and management, along with 1-on-1 ownership consultation and jeweler certifications.

JEMS Co-founder Jim Ackerman has served the Jewelry Industry for nearly 30 years, providing the industry’s only Coaching Program training jewelers on how to market their enterprises. During that time he and Paul Furse, JEMS other Co-founder, have helped literally hundreds of jewelers better understand marketing and advertising and improve their foot traffic, sales and profits, sometimes exponentially.

During that tenure, Jim, Paul and the rest of their team have created dozens of profit-proven marketing programs that are now available through the JEMS Institute for jewelers to “plug-n-play” for virtually any occasion.

Meanwhile, Paul has spent the better part of 5 years developing a genuinely new and revolutionary sales process that has proven stunningly simple and highly effective, and capable of turning the newest floor jeweler into a sales superstar.

Add to that Paul’s extensive management and jewelry store ownership experience, the pair’s extensive library of training content, an impressive collection of production and media resources, and jewelers no longer have to scour the country to find a rag tag collection of vendors to provide answers to their questions and problems.

“In my 27 plus years in the Jewelry industry I have learned a couple of things that I believe any jeweler will agree with,” says Ackerman. “First jewelers just want to be jewelers. They want to design, make and sell jewelry. And second, while they know they have to deal with management, marketing and media, they’re frustrated that they don’t know where to go or who to trust, and especially that they have to go a half-dozen different places to get what they need. We’ve started JEMS to solve that.”

According to Ackerman and Furse, the buying groups provide products and present an array of vendors who can provide all kinds of services, but the jeweler has to individually vet and hire several of these service providers. They often find overlapping services or gaps in service, and worse, conflicting approaches and philosophies that can hinder productivity and cause ambiguity and confusion.

According to Furse, “You have a vendor that provides a Christmas catalog. Is it any good? You hire a sales trainer, a management consultant or coach, a marketing agency, somebody to help with merchandising and inventory. You’ve got a POS, a clienteling service, somebody to do your social media. And on and on it goes. You have to get all these people on the same page and yet write them all different checks each month. No wonder you don’t like this stuff.”

Furse goes on to say that a better approach would be to begin with a specific business philosophy or approach and bring all of the disciplines together under one umbrella, all focused on the desired, big picture outcome and all paid for with one check.

“That’s what we’re about,” declares Furse.

JEMS Institute provides jewelers with a substantial and ever-growing library of training materials in marketing, sales, sales team management and store management, for a single, 1-time price. This lifetime membership includes, but is not limited to…

• Lifetime access to the cataloged archive of training materials
• Monthly webinars on management and marketing (also archived to the library)
• Unlimited, personalized 1-on-1 consultation on sales management, store management, marketing and media
• Access to community help and resources provided by the membership to each other
• Jeweler specific Management, Marketing & Sales Certifications

Also provided and billed through the membership, are access to 3rd party services, often at discounted rates are…

• Graphic design, photography, video and audio production
• Printing and mailing
• Traditional media buying and management,
• Digital media and management
• Lead identification and list generation
• Access to an ever-growing library of proven jewelry store marketing programs and promotions
• In-store or virtual Yes Point™ Sales Training for entire stores or individual staff members
• Our traditional 1-on-1 Coaching Programs in Marketing and Management
• And more…

Ackerman provides several examples…

“If you’d like a postcard designed of any size, we can do that for a mere $70. A billboard or store sign? $35. Would you like to do a Christmas Catalog of your own, based on proven principles of catalog success? You can do that for as little as $900. Our turnkey marketing programs can be licensed for half price and the same goes for our Coaching programs and Sales Training.”

Ackerman goes on to say that Media management is provided with your membership and media buys can sometimes be discounted by 5-10 percent.

In addition, services like market segmentation reports, lead lists generated from those reports and other similar services are provided at discounts as high as 66%.

“And the best part is,” according to Paul Furse, “your brand continuity is absolutely insured and you’re writing just one check regardless of the services you use. That’s because JEMS provides the oversight of all of your efforts, negotiates the better-than-normal deals, manages the vendors, sends you the bill, then disburses the funds to the vendors you use as appropriate.”

This level of comprehensive, across the board services have never been available in the jewelry business before, allowing the individual jeweler to choose their desired mix of done-for-you and do-it-yourself initiatives in marketing and managing their business.

With over 2 dozen jewelers already onboard, JEMS is offering a deep early-bird discount for the 1-time membership fee, which can save jewelers roughly 40%. But only for the first 100 members. Details can be found at www.JemsInstitute.org.