Headlines

New Owners of Ice.com Plan to Make It Biggest Jewelry Store on the Internet

Published

9 years ago

January 26, 2016

INSTORE Staff

The owners want to bring pricing transparency to the industry.

Maybe you remember Ice.com. It used to be an online jewelry store, but it went by the wayside during the recession. Now, Tech Crunch writes, the domain name is owned by two men who purchased it for $3 million in 2014 to set up their own jewelry marketplace with a fair-pricing business model.

According to the article, Ice.com negotiates with vendors on pricing and requires that items be sold at an undisclosed percent off from competitive market pricing. The website targets the middle of the market and currently offers more than 100,000 SKUs, though the owners – both of whom have impressive track records in e-commerce – plan to ramp up that number to as high as 500,000 by the end of the year, which would make Ice.com the biggest online jewelry marketplace. They also recently raised $2 million from a gaggle of venture capitalists that should help them move closer to that distinction.

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After almost 60 years in business, Breakiron Jewelers in Erie, Pennsylvania, was closing its doors. And the store’s owner, Linda Breakiron, was ready for it. She had run the store as its sole owner since the beginning of the millennium and was looking forward to a change. Of course, she called Wilkerson. Breakiron talked to other jewelers who had used Wilkerson and was satisfied with their response. “They always had positive feedback,” she recalls. With the sales, marketing and even additional inventory that Wilkerson provided, Breakiron insists she could never have accomplished her going-out-of-business sale without Wilkerson’s help. She’s now ready for the journey ahead, but looking back, she’d be sure to recommend Wilkerson. “They just made the whole process very seamless.”