Fine Jewelry Sellers
With the advent of large internet retailers, small family owned jeweler since 1895 stores have found themselves at sort of a loss. With costs that are associated with a real-space business, small businesses are a bit behind. Sure, your family can still go to big box stores or shop online, but what about the stores you can take your weird requests to? Luckily, many family owned jeweler since 1895 stores are taking to the internet, too, which allows them to service a larger audience, while still maintaining high standards of service. So what do you look for in a modern small fine jeweler? How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? In this, as in so many things, a little research is worth a lot of time.
Businesses are not the only newly empowered agents in the technological age. It is easier than ever to dig into a business's past. You can find out what people think on Yelp or even check with the local Chamber of Commerce to look into a shop's reputation. It's plenty easy to find people with legitimate praise and with legitimate problems. How you weight them is your own calculus, but the information is out there.
Research is key to high-cost investments. You wouldn't buy a car without investigating the dealership, loan rates, and the stats of the car itself, and you shouldn't invest in jewelry without knowing the people to whom you are giving your money. You want to make sure they share your customer service values, share your ideas on conflict-free stones, and share an aesthetic value.
The first sticking point is the kinds of services they offer. This seems kind of obvious at first glance, but technological advances have helped small jewelers even as it has put brick and mortar stores in peril. Some stores offer the traditional set of services, like sizing and repair, but some have amazing new tools. Having an affordable and reliable jeweler who can use CAD (computer-assisted design) to help you design a completely unique custom ring is something new to the average consumer. If you don't expect to ever need that, then you're not going to need to do research on their CAD training or results.
You can use Facebook, too, when you're looking into a jewelry store. I probably wouldn't choose a store by looking at Facebook alone, but you can look at the FB widget on their page. Do they have a lot of fans? Do most of their fans live in that area? Does it look like most of them are spambots? Do they have a blog they write on or update Twitter with more than just ads or promotions? If you're looking for a jewelry store that's the kind of reliability that you pass on to your kids, it helps to know that they're willing to reach out to you. If they put out a lot of educational materials, it means that they're concerned about selling quality, not quantity.
