Friendly atmosphere in a jewelry store

Simple: if you want to create a friendly atmosphere in a jewelry
store, than the people working in the jewelry store need to be
friendly!

When training new employees, I instruct them to interact with
customer the same way they want salespeople at other stores to
interact with them. For example, when I enter a store, I expect to be
greeted, and I want to be able to get help from a salesperson quickly
and easily should and when I want it. However, until that point, I
want to be left alone and allowed to browse without someone shadowing
me!

When a customer first approaches a showcase, our employees are
trained to look them in the eye, smile, and offer a quick “hello”,
“good morning” and “Let one of us know if you have any questions or
need any help”, and then leave the customer alone. What is the sense
in asking them “can I help you”? The customer hasn’t had time to get
interested in anything yet, and 99% of the time they’re going to
reply with “Just looking”, etc, but now we’ve made them feel
pressured. However, after a salesperson has made an initial greeting,
and after a customer has been in the store for a few minutes and is
spending some time around a particular showcase, then depending upon
their reading of the customer the salesperson can make a second
approach.

In terms of creating a friendly environment, our employees our
encouraged (actually expected) to get into non-jewelry related
conversations with customers. By doing so, a personal relationship
can be created instead of a simple customer-salesperson relationship.
Then a funny thing happens: even though all salespersons get an equal
share of 5% commission of the store’s total sales, some customer’s
won’t buy from anyone but their “favorite” salesperson because they
want to be sure that they gets credit for the sale!

Doug

Regarding the issue of whether or not to display prices:

I have a small silver jewelry store in a very busy (means high
rent!) mall. Because I sell primarily silver (low price points) I
have to make a LOT of sales to stay in business; in order to make a
lot of sales I have to display a LOT of jewelry! One of our continual
struggles is keeping our showcases attractively displayed and
uncluttered-looking while at the same time keeping them full.

We don’t just display the jewelry will-nilly (is that a word?) on
glass shelves–we try to created attractive-looking displays,
grouping like items near one another, creating sets, etc. Our problem
with displaying prices is two-fold: one, since we’re not computerized
(yet!) price tags have to be written out by hand, which looks
unprofessional and, depending upon who created the price tag, can
look downright messy. Secondly and perhaps more importantely,
hundreds of these price tags in each showcase makes the showcases
look very cluttered and visually even more overwhelming.

However, I, too, like to see prices when I shop, and in spontaneous
customer “interviews”, nearly every customer has told me they would
prefer to see the prices of our jewelry without asking to see the
piece. So what to do?!

I bought a label-making machine at one of the office supply
superstores, and in each showcase we label a dozen or so designs and
sets with prices which gives customers a general idea of our prices.

Does anyone have any better ideas? (I really like David’s idea of
creating a “menu” of prices and leaving the menu on top of the
showcase!)

Doug

FYI: Rio Grande sells packages of little black plastic lego-type
cubes of #s which you can use to create professional-looking price
displays.

My decision after running a jewelry “gallery” for years is that I do
a little of both. I personally HATE, HATE, HATE price tags. They
are ugly, goon up a display, get in the way, and you have all these
strings and bits of plastic to contend with. I always try to hide
them as much as possible.

But after discussions with my daughters and like one of the writers,
we bought a label maker with clear tape and put between and between
prices on a series of work. The clear tape blends in with the
particular background I am using with that specific display and
gives my clientele an approximate feel for the prices. However, I
only do this with pieces under a couple hundred dollars. Anything
higher than that I get to pull out the piece, put it in the hands of
the client, romance it and give them the price.

Only twice have I had complaints that I don’t list prices. I
usually just say that I HATE, HATE, HATE the tags. And then I look
surprised and very graciously say “I really don’t have any
complaints about it” and let the subject drop, because at this point
I have a piece out and in the hands of the client.

For what it’s worth…Marlene Richey