As I write this, I’m located in seat 1A on an American flight from Las Vegas to Dallas, the first leg of my return home from a surprisingly robust JCK Show. I’ve been reviewing notes from over ninety meetings during the main show as well as CBG, and I’m struck by similarities in what I saw to events that began in March of 2012 as I spent my annual week at the March Hong Kong Show. During that fateful week, I discovered something so extraordinary that it was to have a profound impact on the subsequent trajectory of the company for which I was working, its customers, as well as on my career. Since the similarities in my experience at the 2024 JCK Show are so striking, I thought I might share the two experiences with you in this month’s article.
As I walked the Hong Kong Show that year, an action I always take prior to the subsequent four days of appointments, I saw one booth that was totally slammed, often a sign that this might be an important new supplier to visit. It was a Japanese company – Crossfor – and the excitement at their booth was being caused by a new patented mounting that allowed a diamond to continuously move within a frame, creating an interesting – perhaps even exciting – optical effect. And then several days later, I discovered during a meeting with a major sightholder (Signet’s largest diamond jewelry supplier) that they had created over 600 sample designs using this mounting, and I would get a chance to select from this assortment to allocate sku’s for my upcoming Christmas flyer program. Even better, they handed me a couple of samples to take home. And I must tell you, I was pretty excited to take this idea to market.
Immediately upon my return to the states, I met with the ownership team at my employer to review the various trends that I had identified in Hong Kong and the actions I intended to take in final product selection for the flyer programs. And while they were actually not initially impressed with the new Crossfor mounting, as it struck them as a bit gimmicky, we agreed to put together an assortment for the upcoming Chicago Instore Show in early April to gauge retailer interest.
As I recall, we had thirty-two meetings at the Chicago Show which produced an astonishing thirty-one orders for our new branded collection, to which I had given the name “Rhythm of Love” with the tagline “powered by her heartbeat”. The retailers loved it. And as I watched them react to the samples, I witnessed a fascinating, segmented response pattern between male and female meeting attendees.
The vast majority of our meetings were with married couples, and I watched as dollar signs flickered in the eyes of the males, predictably reacting as business owners sensing a new trend item. But the women reacted as consumers, rather than business owners, and I detected a magnetic attraction to this new product for themselves, often signified by a decision to self-purchase. These women were entranced by the visual elements of the product, as well as the concept, a precursor indication of likely consumer response.
Armed with this information, I loaded the front and back covers of my Christmas flyers and catalogs with Rhythm of Love sku’s. And as the summer 2021 selling season progressed, and we started to ship flyer product orders, a new scenario occurred.
Normally when we shipped seasonal flyer orders, we wouldn’t see reorders until early November, when retailers received counter copies and suddenly realized that significant portions of their initial product orders had already sold through. But with Rhythm of Love, we saw immediate reorders, owing to the fact that the product was turning instantly, and retailers were highly motivated to replenish. The end result was a 3-year avalanche of business, resulting in an exponential increase in sales, customer base, and income levels, as well as a wonderful increase in sales and market share for over one thousand Rhythm of Love dealers.
Now let’s fast forward to JCK 2024. I knew going in that attendance would be markedly reduced, owing to a general slowdown that was occurring in the market. And the precipitous decline in LGD prices during the past 6 months was causing buyer hesitation, as well as frustration over a decline in average unit bridal retails. But like the Crossfor mounting that powered sales a dozen years prior, I came to the Show armed with something I suspected was similarly amazing: Legacy.
The idea behind Legacy is simple. I had been searching for a way to inject a romantic element into LGD, while simultaneously finding a way to “gently” increase average unit bridal retails. And then in discussions this spring with the Chairman of JB Bhanderi, we experienced a collaborative epiphany and arrived at an extraordinary solution: Why just sell a diamond, when you can also provide its seed? It’s a revolutionary concept, but how would retailers – and consumers – respond to the idea?
We got our answer when I first expressed it during a presentation at the Tuesday morning retailer meeting at the CBG Show, prior to JCK. The traffic my presentation produced was extremely encouraging, as we saw not only existing dealers but also a number of new retailers – some very smart ones, in fact – who I had never met before visiting our booth to sign up.
Then at our ballroom at JCK, the concept received overwhelmingly positive reviews. And just as I had seen twelve years before with the Crossfor mounting, I witnessed the same segmented response pattern. The male reaction to the idea was instant acceptance, a good sign. But most importantly, female jewelry store owners listening to the story reacted as consumers, and as I explained the potential use of the accompanying seed in growing a diamond for an as-yet-unborn child who at some future point would be getting engaged, I watched their eyes as their hearts melted. In constructing an entirely new way of thinking about lab grown diamonds, we had struck a powerful emotional chord producing precisely the effect I intended.
Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme, and the historical rhyme I saw in Las Vegas was invigorating. I’m already pretty busy, but I suspect after witnessing responses to the diamond seed time capsule in Las Vegas, I’m going to have an extremely busy summer, and create lots of new dealers. Watch for these segmented response patterns as you speak with consumers in your store, and I think you’ll similarly discover triggers that produce desirable buying responses.
Class dismissed!
