Handling Repairs During Christmas Season

3 Ways to handle jewelry repairs during the Christmas season

This Christmas is on route to be a good one for many jewelers. After
catastrophes many stores do well. Christmas was good for many after
9/11 and now that the hurricanes are over, gift giving as a “healer”
is a good thing.

Selling is now your focus but for many customers THEIR FOCUS might be
different. Still, many are on a budget and “recycling” old jewelry
as gifts is a great idea to give treasured gifts to loved ones and
save themselves some money. But just because they save money doesn’t
mean you can’t make good money from it.

Many of you polish rings for customers for free. Always a good “P.R.”
idea but think about what it can do for your bottom line as well as
the customer’s inner feelings to get this added income.

Customers have three things that can be done with old jewelry this
Christmas:

  1. Refinish the item:

Simple. Round out the ring, emery out scratches and refinish like
new. Charge $15.00 to do this to any item without ANY stones in it.
i.e. signet rings, bracelets, etc,

Charge $35.00 and up to do the same thing but when the piece has
stones in them. You’ll still refinish but also check and tighten the
stones and guarantee them from loss as long as everything is in good
shape (see our price book for the details) for 1 year.

This is easy to work into your work load. Just like there’s "always
room for Jell-O, there’s always enough time to buff rings. And you’ll
make good money while making your customers happy. Who knows, maybe
you can sell them additional items to match the pieces you polished
for them to give away. If you have our version 4.0 book, the counter
mat that comes with the book has these polishing options all laid
out, in color.

  1. Reset an item:

Another easy thing to slip into the work. Suggest taking a major
stone from their piece if jewelry and reset it into a mounting that
you’d buy from a supplier. Easy enough to reset 1-5 stones in heads
when you buy the mounting. Taking mom’s smaller diamond from her
original engagement ring and remounting it into a pendant and selling
a nice chain makes a reasonably priced necklace.

A triple key markup on the mounting and easy triple key on setting
from our price book. Another cool thing to make customers happy and
this is easily a $200-$600 (or more) sale without any great expertise
or time involved.

  1. Custom Design

When I had my store we cut off custom designing for Christmas
delivery around December 5th. This is probably one thing you won’t be
able to do a lot of, it’s a time consuming sale in the front and back
of the store, especially closer to Christmas.

If you can do it in time, great profits. For some of you a Stuller
mounting is a custom design and that is indeed true. But to us
carving a wax was custom. I have found across the country as well as
in my store that a custom design is easily 2-4 times HIGHER than a
typical product sale. If you can do this for the season, great
profits.

Number 1 and 2 are the things to push. You’ll be surprised how many
folks at $35 to give a present of meaning to someone they love will
just say “Is that all? O.K.”

Last subject: Repairs in general for Christmas. We cut off repairs
for Christmas delivery on December 10th. Big sign in the showroom
stating that fact and all repairs taken in during Christmas would be
delivered December 10th.

But want another money maker for Christmas? Many folks either want
their stuff fixed for Christmas, to wear and enjoy or again they
want to FIX things and give as a present. In our price book we have
always charged 50% more (called “Express Service”) for same day
service. During December you may not want to, that’s why we promise
non-essential repairs for January. But to accommodate customers (the
reason we opened our doors) who need it done we will CHARGE EXRESS
SERVICE DURING DECEMBER BUT DELIVER THE REPAIRS ON DECEMBER 23RD FOR
PICKUP.

So we charge more to slip a repair into our already busy schedule. If
they want to pay, we’ll do it. At 50% more, you can afford to pay
the jewelers overtime to get it done.

One more thing. We advertised in the newspaper on Christmas Day and 3
days before New Years Eve:

“Was your Christmas present the wrong size?”

Our ad went further to state that we could size their presents the
same day, slight additional charge (our Express Service"). I didn’t
care where they bought it; many other stores were promising sizings
in January. Yuk! Women want to wear their rings, necklaces and new
watches NOW. They also want to be dressed up for New Years and show
off the gifts they received. Be there for them, offer the week after
Christmas while you wait or same day service at Express Service
prices (separate column in our price books).

I hope you have a great holiday season. Would love to hear reports
from you after the season is over how you did, increases/decreases,
etc.

Sincerely

David Geller
Director of Profit

JewelerProfit, Inc.
510 Sutters Point
Atlanta, GA. 30328
(404) 255-9565 Voice
(404) 252-9835 Fax
david@JewelerProfit.com

Mr Geller is right about the repair subject at Christmas. Between
now and end of Feb, I will do several hundred dollars a week of
simple watch band adjustments on Christmas watches. In addition this
is my best season for new watchband sales, as many people do not like
the band that comes on their new Christmas watches. I will stock
around 1000 pieces in Speidel metal and leather combined, and will
restock nearly as heavy again aprox March. As for custom, I am
finishing up my last 2 wax jobs tonight, to send for casting on
Monday. That leaves me from now to Christmas to finish and set all
the castings done during the last 6 weeks. I will still take in
simple remount jobs until about a week from Christmas, since Stuller
usually has the mountings to me in a day or 2 at most.

Ring sizing will go full blast from now till February, and most will
be happy with my normal turnaround of 2 weeks, but many are happy to
pay ‘express’ price for varing amounts of speedier service.

My store is mostly a repair store, but during this season, my
inventory moves quite well as people make impulse purchases. And as
people develope trust with us from their repairs throughout the year,
they often switch from their old fav jeweler and shop us 1st at
Christmas time.

Ed in Kokomo