One role that Greatest thinks should be in EVERY jewelry store is “gift concierge”.

What an amazing way to spend your life. You will be an ambassador of joy, spreading happiness everywhere you go. You’re basically the jewelry-store equivalent of Snow White. If you told Greatest that every morning a team of squirrels helped you clean your store's carpets, we might not believe you. But we wouldn’t completely DISBELIEVE you either.

“Gift Concierge” can be an official position and promoted as such on your website — with a menu item called “Gift Concierge”; a chat-box labeled “Contact our gift concierge”; or even a section of the home page titled “Gift Concierge’s Picks (for Such and Such Upcoming Holiday)”.

You can also send out emails with similar titles and content.

Of course, this doesn’t have to be an official position — this can be a role ALL of your salespeople play in their clienteling efforts.

But there’s something powerful about having someone on staff whose only responsibility is clienteling as hard and as creatively as humanly possible and manufacturing sales out of thin air.

Throughout the year, your gift concierge will focus on birthdays and anniversaries. But with May around the corner, let’s also try to generate some sales for Mother’s Day, a holiday which has seen slippage in sales activity (and price points) in recent years.

To market for Mother’s Day, select targets from your database based on age, family status (married, kids) and money spent on previous purchases. Contact targets in your database with an email, text or phone call. (Experiment with all three modes to see which works best and lean into that one.)

With Mother’s Day upcoming, your contacts (starting in early April) might go like this:

“Hey, what are you doing for Mother’s Day this year? We’ve got a few really creative new packages we’ve created to help you truly spoil the moms in your life! Which of these do you think she’d love most?”

These packages can be:

• Item of jewelry (good/better/best structure)
• Custom jewelry package (design created by you and your family).
• Item of jewelry bundled with delivery of flowers and/or custom chocolate.
• Item of jewelry bundled with a catered gourmet breakfast served in bed
• Item of jewelry bundled with a dinner reservation for your family.

You can even add a photography option. If the goal is to create indelible memories for families to share, professional photos are a BIG help (and obviously useful for social distribution which increases your word-of-mouth).

Anyway, that’s the offer. Most will say no. That’s fine. However, even with your “nos”, get as much information as you can.

Tell the customer you LOVE to hear great ways to celebrate Mother’s Day (or whatever holiday it is). And whatever they answer, be supportive in your response, “Oh, that’s a really nice idea. I’m sure she’ll love it.”

Remember, you’re in it for the long haul. And your REAL goal is, ultimately, to build your knowledge of what gifts people give each other.

Getting deeper into the mode of concierge, you might even ask the customer what they’d get for their mom/mother of their children if they could purchase ANYTHING. This might turn out to be something quite specific and odd — i.e. an original concert t-shirt from the Journey 1987 “Raised On Radio” tour. (Because that was Mom’s favorite band and the site of one of her first dates with Dad.)

That’s great. Perhaps you can even help the customer locate such a shirt.

And, from that point forward, “original concert t-shirt of mom’s favorite band” becomes part of your creative Mother’s Day gift-suggestion arsenal.

In the past, INSTORE has suggested that your goal is to become your town’s number-one romance expert. But maybe your goal is to instead become your town’s number-one GIFT expert?

Or, even better, be BOTH.

If you become the person that everyone in your community knows to go to for the most creative gifts and memorable experiences (birthday skydiving, 25th anniversary balloon rides) … well, that is definitely not a BAD thing.

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Questions? Write [email protected].

METALS REPORT

Gold steady as tariff concerns loom.

At midnight New York time, gold prices were down 0.10% to $3,017.70; platinum was down 0.10% to $985.00; and palladium was down 0.42% to $978.00. (See latest prices on Kitco.)

CRIME REPORT

Sledgehammer, pickaxe used in Colorado break-in.

2 arrests in $1.7 million NY smash-and-grab. / NY jeweler charged with buying stolen goods from South American theft gang. / Kim Kardashian to testify in 2016 Paris robbery case.

AROUND THE INDUSTRY

Marina B opens first flagship store on Madison Avenue.

Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) wears Belperron jewelry – and a truly insane dress — to awards show. / Ulysse Nardin opens first US boutique inside Stephen Silver Menlo Park store. / British Vogue: 66 dazzling celebrity engagement rings.

Today’s Dates

• “Days” of the Day: Make Up Your Own Holiday Day (see below), Epilepsy Awareness Day (donate), National Live Long and Prosper Day (aka Leonard Nimoy’s birthday), National Spinach Day
• “DAYS” THIS WEEK: Teachers' Day (March 28), National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day (March 29), National Doctor’s Day (March 30), National Prom Day (March 31)
• MILESTONE Birthday: Actress Keira Knightley turns 40 today.
• Entertainment Anniversaries: Two fondly-remembered movies — Hot Tub Time Machine and How to Train Your Dragon were released on this day in 2010. (Catch peak John Cusack in the Hot Tub trailer.)

10 Things To Do In Your Store Today

• COMMUNICATIONS: Today is Spinach Day, so in honor of the oft-disfavored* vegetable, let’s do something you won’t like much that’s good for you. Call an irritating customer or supplier to solve a festering issue, or have a “tough talk” with an under-performing staff member. Do it first thing so it’s done with. (Pro tip: you really should pretend EVERY day is “Spinach Day”).

*To be fair, spinach au gratin is pretty awesome.

• MAKE UP SOME FUN: As noted above, today is Make Up Your Own Holiday Day. Yesterday we suggested you declare today “National Repurpose Your Old Jewelry Day” and offer a redesign special. But you could try something else – “National Initial Jewelry Day”, “World Chunky Chain Day” or “Oversized Hoops (So Big Your Toy Poodle Could Jump Through Them) Day”. Whatever you do, have FUN!
• MARKETING: Early May is Communion season. Begin working on creative concepts (products, color schemes, language) for those religious-jewelry ads and posts you’ll start later in April.
• INVENTORY: April and May are key months for clearing out your inventory before the summer shows. Over the weeks ahead, we’ll share regular tips for making room in your showcases for your new purchases.
• MARKETING: March 29 is National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day. Does your area small-business association or “main street” business group promote local moms-and-pops to area residents? It should. But if not, don’t be shy about touting your “mom-and-pop” credentials and tell everybody how proud you are to both live in, and serve, your community.
• PROM PREP: National Prom Day is March 31. Depending on when proms are held in your community, you may or may not host an event on that day. But you should begin planning your prom season activities. One idea is to host a “Prom Dress Party”. Encourage young prom-goers to bring their dresses into the store to try on coordinating jewelry. (You may also offer a rental option.) Have different days when you host young women from different schools.
• STAFF: Continue employee reviews. (Here’s a great Peter Drucker question to ask during a review.)
• STORE IDENTITY: Trust is crucial to any jeweler’s position in his market. What actions can you take this year to increase the (accurate) perception that ethics and honesty are at the core of your operation? Sometimes there is not a full appreciation of just how honest most small jewelers are.
• TECH: Set a reminder to restart your smartphone once a week.
  Are you one of the many people who never, ever restart your smartphone except when it runs out of batteries? Make it a habit to restart it at least once weekly. Your phone will be faster and work better. It will even be more secure.
• SELF-CARE: Have you been working non-stop since the end-of-year holidays? You’re overdue to recharge. Book yourself a long weekend somewhere pretty.

What Every Jeweler
Should Know: The Welcome

1. Keep the “sweet spot” covered at all times. Per jewelry sales expert and longtime INSTORE columnist Shane Decker, that’s 10 to 15 feet inside the front door, to the customer’s right. Someone always needs to be there, to greet anyone entering within five seconds.
2. Smile. People buy jewelry for happy occasions. They want to buy it from happy people.
3. Make everyone feel welcome. Every jeweler has a story about the guy in ratty overalls who dropped $15,000 on a ring — after walking out of the first store he visited, because they were snooty to him.
4. Avoid stale opening lines. “Can I help you find anything?” is just asking to be waved off, as is “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” Phrases like that make you sound like a salesperson, when you want to be an engaging person to look at jewelry with. Try an open-ended question that isn’t about business, whether it’s small talk (“How was traffic getting here?”) or a little more personal (“What are you up to today?”), as long as you ask with genuine interest.
5. Practice getting past brush-offs like “I’m just looking” by validating the customer and turning the brush-off into a question: “That’s great — please look all you want! So, what brought you in here to look?”
6. Introduce yourself. (You don’t need to ask the customer’s name until you’re further along; it can be a bit off-putting when they’ve just walked in.)
7. Ask if they’d like something to drink.
8. Offer to clean their rings while they browse.
9. Offer to throw away their trash — if they walk in carrying a cup or wrapper, or when they finish the soda you offered them. It’s a simple thing, but people appreciate being relieved of the responsibility so much.
10. Address both partners when waiting on a couple. Nobody likes feeling invisible.

Question We Asked ChatGPT This Week

When the reCAPTCHA shows a guy riding a motorcycle, do I need to click the squares with the guy or only the squares that show the motorcycle?

ChatGPT responded: When you're doing a reCAPTCHA and you see an instruction to select images with a motorcycle, you should click all squares that contain any part of the motorcycle, including the squares where parts of the person riding it might overlap. The main focus should be on identifying the motorcycle itself, but if the rider is partially in any of the squares, those should be selected as well.

Grade: C-. On further research (Reddit RULES!), it appears that this answer isn’t quite wrong. But it’s not correct either. Seems like reCAPTCHA software, moreso than correct answers, is looking for human behavior. A certain rhythm of response that indicates a human is at the mouse. And actually, for some reCAPTCHAs, the software has no idea what is correct and is actually using YOUR response to train itself.

Meanwhile, enjoy this meme familiar to all you reCAPTCHA-sufferers out there.

Best Rave Ever

Eve J. Alfille of Eve J. Alfille Gallery and Studio in Evanston, IL shares the following story:

“The bouquet of white roses the older cranky gentleman brought me. Earlier that day he had testily insisted I give him a discount, and wouldn't stop.

“I asked him to imagine he was a prehistoric man, and had found a ruby in the forest, not knowing what he was looking at, but stunned by its beauty — then later, a friend helped him find a way to tie it around his neck as a pendant, to keep close and admire.

“In that situation, would he not find this thing incredibly precious and valuable? Why would he ever want to demean it?

“I told him, ‘When you ask for a discount you are REALLY saying is that the jewel is less worthy. Don’t DO that!’

“He paid, took the piece and later that day I was truly amazed and touched when he came with the flowers, and wordlessly handed them to me.”

Here are a couple more online favorites from retailers.

Last Laugh: The Jeweler

Greatest truly enjoys the cartoons of Tim Searfoss. Few cartoonists, including those in consumer media, can make us laugh. But Tim gets it done. Tim took a sabbatical during 2024, but recently returned and is now back producing cartoons that appear regularly on the main INSTORE site.

This panel (entitled “The Jeweler Bites Off More Than He Can Chew”) perfectly captures the bench-jeweler experience as we imagine it — while also making Greatest think of his own experience committing to producing this gigantic daily bulletin.

Send your questions to [email protected]